By Saumya Tiwari
LG has added another feather to its cap by launching its latest smart phone with a PANIC BUTTON. What makes this more overwhelming is the fact that it has become the first company to do so after the Indian Government made it compulsory for phone manufacturers to include Panic Button in all their phones.
While there might be some people who would criticize this feature, but what many would not know is that it is not LG’s sole decision.
Here are all the things you need to know:
Panic Button – how will it function?
The Panic Button can be triggered by long pressing of a button or three successive presses on a single button. The button then on being activated, will make a call to the single emergency response number 112.
This in collaboration with the GPS feature. Pressing the Panic Button will quickly send the location information of the device, giving an upper hand in securing the user.
What is the Government order being talked about?
TRAI, in April 2016 mandated that all mobile phones in the country from January 1, 2017, will be sold with physical panic button feature. The deadline however, on the requests of telecom operators who were troubled by the unsold inventory of phones without panic button, was extended by two months. This minor aberration in deadline was blamed on demonetization by Indian Cellular Association(ICA) National President Pankaj Mohindroo, who also thanked LG for spearheading this SOS panic button idea .
This initiative started taking shape right after the brutal Nirbhaya gang-rape case. The Finance Ministry approved a Nirbhaya Fund following the incident for the integration of the police administration with mobile phone network providers to trace and to effectively respond to distress calls within a minimum response time.
Who will be the prospective users of this button?
Though it might seem as if this feature is targeted solely at women, which is imperative owing to the main motive which led to the surfacing of this panic button idea, what we often forget that there are other vulnerable groups of people who can effectively use this feature. Elderly people, adolescents and specially-abled people will also benefit from the panic button.
What level of safety should we expect?
An automatic phone call to the emergency number and a notification of victim’s location seems reasonably good. Though the test run couldn’t be implemented due to the copious amounts of blank calls received on the server end.
The phone and its features are quite promising. And the new ruling by Government for the same, if implemented well, can do wonders for safety of Indians and their family members. A few more versions of the same, say panic button sending information to your emergency contacts can also be integrated in it for its improvement.
The Panic Button feature means that till the time authorities work on providing a safe environment to the women in the country, there will be a cushion women can fall back to in the meantime.
(Image Credits: Google Images)
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