How to stop emergency or distress number from Power Button of smart phone

When you set Lock screen lock in the form of a password or pin then you must be knowing about the presence of emergency number or distress number.

It is generally 112 and it is there with a lock screen as well as on some phones like Lyf Water 7 and so it is there when you press the power button one or more times.

The most obvious difficulties are the pressing of power button accidentally one or more times in order to wake up with the phone leads to call the emergency number (112) or distress number.

You unwantedly make the call which you never want at that point of time and secondly when the call to the distressing number or emergency number is going on at first the network stays at the state of aeroplane mode for some seconds and thus reaching to desktop screen of the phone takes some time.

If you search for answers by default there is no way you can remove that option altogether. There is no such option for stock Android devices. In India, this services is from Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRAI) as it plans to host a series of services with this number and the main aim is to make the dialling in the case of emergencies and exigencies or in times of distress so easy that even with the touch of power button for some time you can contact authorities.

“It said that GSM phones have inbuilt recognition of emergency numbers 112 and 911. “GSM handsets have an inbuilt feature to enable emergency calling on number 112 and 911. The facility of emergency calling encompasses calling even in cases where the phone is locked with a password; or where there is no balance amount left for making outgoing calls; or where the phone is outside the coverage area of the subscribed network but is receiving a signal from any other mobile operator; or the phone is without a valid subscription.””

https[:][//]timesofindia[.]indiatimes[.]com[/]india[/]112-may-soon-be-national-emergency-number[/]articleshow[/]46843224[.]cms

What it comes is the form of staying of this number with networks. It is a good idea but some original equipment manufacturers have tied this emergency or distress number with that of the power button and that makes managing of the phone difficult most of the times. That is why even in the stage of power on the phone in times of normal and accidentally when the power button is pressed twice it automatically takes the call to distress or emergency number.

That is why most of the mobile distributors with their sim have the number of distress number in the form of 112.

“In emergency situations every passing second count, whether it is a burglary, theft, road rage, or a fire spreading, or a citizen struggling with a heart attack the first few minutes are crucial. It is likely that this crucial time may be lost in figuring out what number to dial,” TRAI had said, according to The Hindu.

So for convenience and even at the times of extreme distress, it is aimed to provide extreme security to users so that automatically without wasting a single second’s users will be able to call for help by dialling the distressing number.

How to stop emergency or distress number from Power Button on the smartphone:

There are so many ways you can remove dialling automatically to distress number by double or triple pressing of the power button of the smartphone.

Most of telecom service providers such as Jio and others have inbuilt mechanisms to insert the distressing number automatically to the phone book and then with the help of Google or Samsung synchronization, the number is synchronized across all of the devices with same Google ids.

First Open Contact and search for distress or emergency number and then delete that number. Now, we have deleted the distressing number from the phone book and stop Google or Samsung account to synchronize the contact number all across devices.

Next, download Jio Security App from Google Play Store and then install it with existing Jio number or Jio account. Activate it and then go to Jio Security and then go to Device and then Call Blocking.

Here, block distress number. In this way, by unattended pressing of Power button more than once for waking up device still, you can stop it from calling to emergency or distress number.

When you search for this information from the internet you would find that most of these articles refer to download some phone lock apps in order to stop showing the emergency number in lock screen but still these provisions are not full proof. Still, most of these article advocate for the rooted device as most of the users prefer not to go with these suggestions.

There are so many disadvantages when you go to the rooted devices. First and foremost the guarantee is void and this is the one of a most difficult part as whenever while doing rooting if the device is not booted correctly then for sure there is no shortcut to going back to showrooms of original equipment manufacturers as the guarantee is void now. That is why for the unrooted device the best answer is to stop that phone number.

If you have android 6 and above then you can block that distress number right from the contacts but if you android 5 and below then installing Jio Security and then blocking that number should remove all the worries of calling back to distress number time and again unintentionally.

Sources & References:

  • http[:][//]www[.]androiddata-recovery[.]com[/]blog[/]learn-to-disable-screen-locks-of-android-devices
  • https[:][//]www[.]iseepassword[.]com[/]bypass-android-lock-screen-password[.]html
  • https[:][//]drfone[.]wondershare[.]com[/]htc[/]htc-lock-screen[.]html

Originally published at mohanmekap.com on November 20, 2018.