Joe Maring / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is working on a new feature that will allow you to share live video with emergency services.
- It appears the feature will work similarly to the Emergency SOS Live Video feature Apple introduced to iOS 18 last year.
- It’s unclear if this feature will be exclusive to Pixels or available for all Android devices.
Pixel phones offer a range of features that can prove helpful in the case of an emergency. For example, there’s Car Crash Detection, Safety Check, Crisis alerts, and more. To add on to this list of emergency features, Google may take some inspiration from Apple.
One emergency feature that’s exclusive to Pixel owners is emergency video recording and sharing. This allows the user to record and save a video up to 45 minutes long. If you have Emergency Contacts set up, a link to the video will automatically be sent 15 seconds after you stop recording to the people you picked to be your contacts. Your Emergency Contacts can then use the link to download the video within seven days.
Apple, on the other hand, takes a different approach to emergency video recording. Introduced in iOS 18 last year, Apple has a feature called Emergency SOS Live Video. The feature allows a user to stream live video or send photos to an emergency dispatcher if the dispatcher sends a request. This video isn’t saved on your device, but a dispatcher can choose to save it.
Currently, Google’s solution doesn’t let you livestream with a dispatcher. It also won’t automatically send a link to your video to emergency services. But it looks like that could change in the near future.
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While looking into version 25.35.34 beta of Google Play Services, we came across a few interesting lines of code. Those lines of code describe a feature that sounds a lot like Apple’s Emergency SOS Live Video. You’ll be able to “Share live video” and “Emergency services will use your camera to view this emergency.”
Code
<string name="thunderbird_live_dialog_button_positive">Share</string>
<string name="thunderbird_live_dialog_message">Emergency services will use your camera to view this emergency. They may also record it.</string>
<string name="thunderbird_live_dialog_title">Share live video?</string>
<string name="thunderbird_live_exit_dialog_message">This will stop sharing live video with emergency services.</string>
<string name="thunderbird_live_exit_dialog_message_button_negative">Keep sharing</string>
<string name="thunderbird_live_exit_dialog_title">Stop live video?</string>⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.
As mentioned earlier, the existing video recording and sharing feature is something that’s exclusive to Pixel phones. Since these strings were found in Google Play Services, it raises the question: Will this feature be available for all Android devices? The answer is unclear at the moment.
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