If you're ever stranded up a mountain with your mobile phone!

[Big Mark]

Not many people know this but it might come in handy if you have a mobile phone with you and you are in big trouble!

Emergency

The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile; network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialled even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.


Hidden Battery Power

Imagine your mobile battery is very low. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your mobile will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your mobile next time.


So there you go. If you pack your mobile along with your axe and knife...all is well werever you are in the world.

Timbo

 

[andy_e]

Sorry...

http://www.snopes.com/science/mobile.asp

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cellphones.asp

... urban legends apparently

 

[waylander]

The battery thing dont work with my sony erickson k750i pity, but I didnt know about the 112 searcing networks.

 

[Nagual]

Never mind Timbo, your heart was in the right place. I wouldn't have known it wasn't true either, so thanks andy_e for that. Still can't replay that whistle for outdoors yet..


Cheers , Nag.

 

[Big Mark]

Drat! Shoulda tried it first!

 

[Big Mark]

Actually just read Andy's link. It says the 112 does work in some areas....and the battery thing works on some phones. I guess it's a bad time to find out if yours works when you are stuck up a mountain somewhere to find out if yours does!? Pesky techknowledgy!

Tim

 

[andy_e]

The battery thing is almost right for some Nokia phones, apparently there is a code (not *3370#) to reduce the call sound quality and increase length of time you can get out of the existing battery life, but it isn't accessing hidden reserves. If your phone is out of juice it won't help.

One thing that may be more useful is to sign up to one of the mobile phone tracking services if you're frequently out of mobile range and in remote places. I seem to remember that it works by determining the last mobile cell (or cells) your phone is in contact with and displays your last known location on the map - the clever thing is that often your phone will be able to contact a cell but not have enough signal to offer service which means that hopefully any one who will miss you can still check your progress. There is one website I was told about that specialises in that kind of thing - but I forget what it was called.

 

[Nagual]

Actually just read Andy's link. It says the 112 does work in some areas....and the battery thing works on some phones. I guess it's a bad time to find out if yours works when you are stuck up a mountain somewhere to find out if yours does!? Pesky techknowledgy!

Tim

Interestingly the snopes article is slightly confusing. The earlier part of it states that if you use 112 it will look for other towers that you normally cannot use. Later it says if you don't have any signal bars on your phone it won't matter what you dial as you are not receiving a signal, now I may be missing something or a tad not too clued up on phones, but I think it works like this, your phone uses it's own network of cell towers / mobile phone masts / pain in the bottom structures ( call them what you like ) if you have roaming then you'll get others too I think. So are they saying that basically your mobile uses roaming when you dial 112? If so whats the comment about signal strength about. As I took it, one comment says it will use roaming ( if you want to call it that for ease ) the other says it won't matter a jot. Which is right? I think the only thing you can safely say is don't rely on yer phone to do squat.

Although.. in an emergency situation, you could use the clear cover as a lens, the battery to start a fire, the plastic bits to burn.. etc Anyone else got any ideas what you could use the phone for if not calls? Now obviously it would be a life or death situation, as the phone could still work later on when nearer a cell.. but lets let imaginations flow...




Cheers Nag.

 

[andy_e]

I have Tetris on mine, helps keep the fingers going in cold weather

 

[RobertRogers]

Also, in some mountainous rural areas these phones won't work. I live in such a place - hikers go into the wilderness thinking that in case of an emergency help is just a cell phone call away. Wrong. James Kim found this out the hard way.

 

[perpetualelevator]

If the Razr is as sharp as they show on the commercials, you could use it as a knife.

 

[xylaria]

Also, in some mountainous rural areas these phones won't work. I live in such a place - hikers go into the wilderness thinking that in case of an emergency help is just a cell phone call away. Wrong. James Kim found this out the hard way.

There is quite a few dead spots in national parks and steep valleys. Normally in the places where you are most likely to fall break your leg. I had a mate that did mountain rescue on dartmoor, he hated the invention of mobile phone for opening up the wilderness to whole new class of stupidity.

Motorola razr has a good mirror on the back.

 

[fishy1]

On a few roads around here you don't get reception, let alone on the mountains. 112 is the emergency phone number for all kinds of phone all over europe, not just mobiles as my supposedly expert teacher told me. He also told us some pretty dodgy first aid.

 

[nickg]

Interestingly the snopes article is slightly confusing. The earlier part of it states that if you use 112 it will look for other towers that you normally cannot use. Later it says if you don't have any signal bars on your phone it won't matter what you dial as you are not receiving a signal, now I may be missing something or a tad not too clued up on phones, but I think it works like this, your phone uses it's own network of cell towers / mobile phone masts / pain in the bottom structures ( call them what you like ) if you have roaming then you'll get others too I think. So are they saying that basically your mobile uses roaming when you dial 112? If so whats the comment about signal strength about. As I took it, one comment says it will use roaming ( if you want to call it that for ease ) the other says it won't matter a jot. Which is right? I think the only thing you can safely say is don't rely on yer phone to do squat.

Although.. in an emergency situation, you could use the clear cover as a lens, the battery to start a fire, the plastic bits to burn.. etc Anyone else got any ideas what you could use the phone for if not calls? Now obviously it would be a life or death situation, as the phone could still work later on when nearer a cell.. but lets let imaginations flow...




Cheers Nag.

I think that the point is that if you have any battery left at all the 112 number will ignore the transport provider you are in contact with and route the call regardless if you are dialling a regular number and the transport provider that you are in contact with does not have an agreement in place with your service provider then it will refuse to connect the call. there is more likely hood of picking upo signal from an uncontracted network if you are abroad - expecially out of europe.
The significant think is that you must have contact with a cell,mast,network to make the 112 call, if you have no signal at all then you wont get a call through period.
some tube sections have comm relays that will route calls, radio & even gps, as have some road tunnels, but not many.

Cheers
Nick

 

[He' s left the building]

I'm reading one of Cody Lundin's books at the moment, very interesting chapter on communication. Basically, in the event of a power failure many people would be caught out by simple transactions failing: eg no ATM's working, therefore no cash, no credit card transactions would be available (compounding the lack of cash problem), no cell-phone coverage (because the masts need power), etc.

 

[Limaed]

Guys
You might be intrested to know that the UK police now often use triangulation as an aid to searching for a missing person. Basically your phone 'checks in' every so often with the nearest masts to it the police then use this information to get a rough fix.
Obviously it dosn't work in areas with no coverage but these are decreasing all the time as the technology develops.
The system isn't always acurate and the fix maybe several kilometers wide but it gives the SAR assets somthing to work on when they may have little information.
Ive seen it used several times on callouts in semi-mountainous areas, so arguably as long as your reported missing and even if your phone has gone dead or you cant use it for what ever reason it may still be of assistance. Who says big brother isn't watching!

 

[Lucyc]

Our physics teacher once told us if you warm up the battery it can eek out some extra time.. Probably not enough though

 

[Nagual]

Our physics teacher once told us if you warm up the battery it can eek out some extra time.. Probably not enough though

Yup thats right and so does shacking a battery, although the amount of life dragged out of it is entirely dependant on the size of the battery. I wouldn't hold out much hope for mobile phone batteries - we did this with large batteries commonly found inside of big smelly MBT's.

I think that the point is that if you have any battery left at all the 112 number will ignore the transport provider you are in contact with and route the call regardless if you are dialling a regular number and the transport provider that you are in contact with does not have an agreement in place with your service provider then it will refuse to connect the call. there is more likely hood of picking upo signal from an uncontracted network if you are abroad - expecially out of europe.
The significant think is that you must have contact with a cell,mast,network to make the 112 call, if you have no signal at all then you wont get a call through period.
some tube sections have comm relays that will route calls, radio & even gps, as have some road tunnels, but not many.

Cheers
Nick

Yeah, the article wasn't 100% stupid proof, I understand the fact that while you have a signal the 112 can use what ever route needed for comms, it just seems puzzling as to why it is of any relevance if you don't have a signal, since if you don''t have a signal it can't reroute your call to another network...? You see what I'm trying to figure out? I'm probably not not making myself very clear am I


Cheers, Nag.

 

[Lucyc]

Yeah, the article wasn't 100% stupid proof, I understand the fact that while you have a signal the 112 can use what ever route needed for comms, it just seems puzzling as to why it is of any relevance if you don't have a signal, since if you don''t have a signal it can't reroute your call to another network...? You see what I'm trying to figure out? I'm probably not not making myself very clear am I

Hmm, well my phone seems to allow "emergency calls only" whenever I don't have signal.. So I assume it works?

 

[dommyracer]

Okay, I'll try and explain this a little. (I work for London Underground and so have had heard this story about 112 numerous times)

The signal indicator on your mobile only shows you if there is signal for the network that your SIM card is allowed to access. So if you're on Orange it only shows you if there is an Orange signal, if you are on O2 it only tells you if there is an O2 signal available.

In some countries, (but NOT the UK) if you are in an area that has no signal for your own provider but there is signal for other providers, and you dial 112, the call will go through to whatever provider is available, if any.

In fact, on older mobile phones when you had no signal on your home network the phone would actually display the words "112 Only" on the screen - my old Ericsson used to do this, back in 1997 - I think some of them still say "Emergency Only" or somesuch

However, this does NOT work in the UK as the various phone companies haven't implemented it.

However, if you are somewhere where this is no signal from any provider at all - like under ground - then there's no way that the call can be routed anywhere.