My original post on this was up for 2 days and then someone removed it. No idea why. I'm going to spell this all out again. SOS feature is not working. I accidentally triggered it two days ago. In the past, if you triggered SOS, it immediately started audio recordings and would send the recordings and your location information to two emergency contacts. All you had to do was trigger SOS. NO other actions were required.
When I accidentally triggered it two days ago, I got the alert tone on my phone but NO information was sent to my emergency contacts. I did some digging to find out what was going on. According to the information in the SOS settings, it is supposed to send your location information and audio recordings to five emergency contacts and call whomever you designate. I had 911 selected. However, NOTHING GETS SENT AUTOMATICALLY!
Now you have to open the phones main settings, find your SOS settings, scroll down to emergency share, open that setting, and then tap start emergency sharing. If you were in an emergency situation, you DO NOT have time to do all of that. If someone has grabbed you and they see you messing around on your phone they're going to take your phone away. This has to be fixed! It should be that once you trigger SOS, all of that information is immediately shared.
Just for funsies, I tapped emergency share to see what would happen. Instead of all of that information going to all five of my emergency contacts and 911 being called, it only went to two of my emergency contacts and 911 was never contacted. I had a feeling that 911 wouldn't be called which was why I went ahead and did the experiment.
Samsung, you have seriously broken this feature. It is something you have got to get fixed. It is an invaluable tool to women of all ages but most importantly to our young women.
A71 5G running Android 13
There is no reason for this to be deleted other than the fact Samsung doesn't want it out there that they've messed up this feature.
Hi KJ W, thank you for reaching out. In addition to reaching out to Google since it is, as @TipsyTrex said, a core Android feature, you can try some troubleshooting as well. First, check for potential third-party app responsibility for the behavior. You cna use this guide for Safe Mode: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00062983/
The last troubleshooting before reaching out to Google is factory resetting the A71. Follow the guide carefully, and back up everything you do not wish to lose beforehand: https://www.samsung.com/us/support/answer/ANS00062029/
Safe mode didn't change anything. Turns out Samsung is MISSING settings.
I went into Google's set up for SOS. If you scroll down far enough you'll see a section for "Set up and turn Emergency SOS on and off" NOT ALL the setting Google tells you to work with are on my phone.
When you add an emergency contact, Google tells you to tap Next so you can choose what to share with them. I deleted ALL of my emergency contacts and re-added them. There was no "next" to tap. No way to proceed with the rest of the post contact settings.
They also have a way for you to start the emergency recordings while your using the phone's other features. That whole set up sequence is NOT THERE on my phone. You're supposed to tap "Start set up" There is no "start set up" to tap.
There is supposed to be a "share automatically after backup" toggle. Google shows a drawing of it. It does not exist on my A71 5G.
I'm running Android 13 and these settings require Android 12 and above. Where are my settings?
The link you sent with the steps for Samsung A71 actually detail having to manually start location sharing. I experimented with that (details in original post) and it didn't work correctly.
I stand behind my statement: if you are in an emergent situation, having the ability to fiddle with finding the correct settings and manually starting location sharing is NOT a realistic. If someone has grabbed you, you'll be lucky to toggle the side button enough time to start the warning tone. If they see you messing with your phone they will take it away before you can start manually sharing the critical information. If it's a different type of emergency, you still may not have presence of mind to remember ALL the steps to start the sharing process manually.
ALSO, the steps Google walls you through show additional settings that my phone DOES NOT have. Factory reset did not help.
If your post was removed previously, you should have received a private message from one of our moderators with the reasoning why. Please follow up with further questions there. If you have completed all the above troubleshooting steps you can submit an error report via the members app to alert our engineers.
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