iOS 18 Gains Emergency SOS Live Video Support

[poorcody]

This story is only about the SOS feature which is defined by not having any cellular service. You cannot even access SOS unless you have no cellular so I don’t see how requiring cellular for video helps anyone.

SOS feature is not defined by satellite:

Use SOS to contact emergency services on your iPhone

In fact your phone will display "SOS" to indicate SOS-mode when your carrier isn't available but another cellular carrier is.

 

[Confused-User]

Perhaps, in the future, as the capacity of Globalstar's satellite network continues to increase, Apple will eventually enable video for general use. For now though, capacity is limited, and it makes sense to limit video to only emergency use.

No. No video, emergency or not, now or in the foreseeable future. It's too data-intensive. Everyone talking about this appears to either be incapable of reading, or is making assumptions that are pretty ridiculous.

Sure seems to me as if Apple is slowly heading towards pure satellite data for everything. Eliminate the cell carriers.

Again, no. Bandwidth is insufficient to requirements by many orders of magnitude.

 

[dcingie]

Imagine being in Los Angeles or San Francisco documenting your victimization in real-time. What a wild time to be alive. They should at least let you keep the footage for the ‘gram.

 

[ZZ9pluralZalpha]

Shouldn’t audio and video streaming be activated automatically in an emergency, provided there’s a setting to enable it? What are the odds of people in a crisis situation to figure out how to use their iPhone to provide consent? Imo, they should also disable the usual ”privacy indicators“ (those orange/green/blue dots when you use certain functions of your iPhone such as camera) in an emergency call so The perpetrators would have less of a clue what’s actually happening.

I'm curious what scenario you're imagining where someone threatening your physical safety is close enough to see some tiny dots on your iPhone screen, yet would not object to the larger "Calling 911" text in the middle? Let alone your having phone access in the first place—I would think that's often the first thing taken in a kidnapping/abuse situation.

 

[robfoll]

guessing another US only feature lol

everything is US only to start with, and then slowly rolls out globally

 

[Shirasaki]

I'm curious what scenario you're imagining where someone threatening your physical safety is close enough to see some tiny dots on your iPhone screen, yet would not object to the larger "Calling 911" text in the middle? Let alone your having phone access in the first place—I would think that's often the first thing taken in a kidnapping/abuse situation.

So… two commenters so far are questioning my suggestion of removing private indicator light in an emergency, which I admit is usually lesser of a concern. But, in a crisis like that, the fewer clues victim’s phone can give to perpetrator the better, no?

 

[steve09090]

So… two commenters so far are questioning my suggestion of removing private indicator light in an emergency, which I admit is usually lesser of a concern. But, in a crisis like that, the fewer clues victim’s phone can give to perpetrator the better, no?

If something like this can stop one injury or save somone’s life, it’s gotta be worth it. Good suggestion.

 

[kc9hzn]

If something like this can stop one injury or save somone’s life, it’s gotta be worth it. Good suggestion.

I’m strongly hesitant to jump on the “if it can save one life” bandwagon. It generally leads to emotional thinking and poorly thought out laws and implementations. I think it’s the sort of thing that requires a proper risk-benefit analysis. Also, I think kidnappers or abusers would probably take your phone away from you first thing at least 90% of the time to prevent you from calling emergency services, so it would be a moot point anyway.

 

[steve09090]

I’m strongly hesitant to jump on the “if it can save one life” bandwagon. It generally leads to emotional thinking and poorly thought out laws and implementations. I think it’s the sort of thing that requires a proper risk-benefit analysis. Also, I think kidnappers or abusers would probably take your phone away from you first thing at least 90% of the time to prevent you from calling emergency services, so it would be a moot point anyway.

Sorry, but I actually find the 'bandwagon' comment to be mildly offensive. But I hope you didn’t mean it to be and probably didn’t. Having been in a police force for almost 40 years, and a CSI for 25 of those, speaking with victims or processing scenes of death every day, anecdotally I don’t ever remember a phone being taken from someone (except in DV cases of course) to stop a person calling police. So I am in the camp of anything that can protect someone or help in alerting police, I’d always vote for that. Bandwagon or not, I prefer people to not die or be injured. I don’t understand why people wouldn’t support that.