I’ve accidentally dialed 911 via the side buttons on my iPhone (I put it into the drink holder in a chair, and it was just tight enough to depress the buttons) and at least twice via the buttons on my Watch (trying to swap out the watch bands). Oh, and once my Watch was wet, and it registered my slide motion in the wrong spot.
Admittedly this is roughly once every 2 years, but still I’m about at the point where I’d like to disable all automatic emergency services.
I had to do this because the kids discovered that if they held down power off and then slid the bar over a nice woman would talk to them and then a big truck would show up!
I let the kids play with an old flip phone, figuring they couldn't get up to too much trouble since it had no service.
Came downstairs to hear them talking about calling 911 - when I picked up the phone there were four outgoing calls!
Fortunately the big truck did not show up, so I guess the operator was able to figure out that there was not actually an emergency (or maybe the phone was too old to communicate its location).
Thanks, apparently I did turn them off at some point. Doesn’t appear to be a way to disable the emergency slider on Watch or iPhone though, unfortunately.
My Pixel 5 had an issue with its power button a few weeks back where it would self-press the button. (I believe some rain had gotten in somehow and was shorting the button).
This resulted in the phone doing various things, such as opening the camera (double press of power), trying to turn itself off, and, worse: activating the "I'm in danger mode" (5 power presses in succession) and counting down to calling 911.
I caught it and cancelled before it dialed, then turned off the phone. However, as you might guess, the phone turned itself back on!
Fortunately I was able to (with much aggravation and accidental swaps to the camera app), eventually get to settings and disable the feature.
Admittedly this is roughly once every 2 years, but still I’m about at the point where I’d like to disable all automatic emergency services.