Emergency contacts and how to set them up

While watching some sort of Emergency 999 programme on TV with Sammie the other week, the conversation turned too – I wonder what would happen if you were in an accident, couldn’t talk, perhaps unconscious and the emergency services wanted to contact your family? Most mobile phones now have an emergency contacts option / setting but did you know about it?

ICE – In case of emergency

In the old days before we locked our phones we used to just put ICE (In case of emergency) next to a contacts name and this could easily be found in your phonebook. But now all (or at least the majority) of people have some sort of lock on their phone, whether thats a biometric, fingerprint or pin code. It could slow down, or even completely prevent the emergency services accessing your phone.

I knew my Samsung had this emergency setting but Sammie didn’t! And it made me wonder how many other people didn’t know about this. Not only can you store emergency contacts but you can even store emergency information and if you have any sort of condition that could be life threatening this little thing on your phone could literally save your life.

How to set up emergency contacts on a Samsung

While your phone is locked, swipe up and click on ‘Emergency Call’ you can then access the ‘Tap to add emergency contact’ option. It will prompt you to unlock your phone. See below for how to also add Medical conditions.

How to set up emergency contacts on a samsung

It will then take you to your phone book where you can add contacts to your emergency contact list. I have added 4 now but it would let me add more so you aren’t limited to just one.

Within this setting you can also add Medical conditions. Allergies, any current medications, blood type and any other information that may be able to assist emergency services.

When you have added your contacts they will appear like below on your lock screen and emergency services know who to contact or if you are unlucky enough to lose your phone then the finder can also contact someone to get it back to you! We’ve found several phones over the years and they’ve always been locked and haven’t been able to get into them but we’ve reunited them with owners with the power of facebook!

How to set up emergency contacts on an iPhone

Firstly – I don’t have an iPhone, and this seems to be a really long way round of doing it, but it was the only way I could work out how to do it on an iPhone, so if you are an iPhone user let me know if there is an easier way and I will most definitely update my blog post 🙂

In your settings tab go to Emergency SOS

Here you will see information on how to set up your emergency call with the sides buttons and add your emergency contacts in the ‘set up emergency contacts in health’

It’s also important to make sure, on this same screen you have clicked the ‘Show when locked’ to green otherwise this information won’t be available via your keypad screen when locked.

As with the samsung you can then add your medical conditions – I have also added a photo so that the emergency services know it is your handset – emergency contacts and any other information you want to be available.