Android emergency location services have been activated by Google in India this week, marking a big move for the company towards its attempt to help users in distress. As the name suggests emergency location service or ELS
has been around in other regions for a while and now people living in India will get access to the service, starting with Uttar Pradesh for now.
Unlike Apple’s satellite based emergency support, Android users can make use of the countrywide emergency number and alert people when they meet with an accident or are injured.
Android Emergency Location Service: How It Will Work In India
Emergencies are hard to plan for and avoid but people seek immediate support and that’s what ELS looks to offer for millions of Android users. Google has developed the tool in the mobile platform and ELS is able to offer the location of the affected person with the right support team when they call the 112 emergency support number.
ELS uses the signal from your phone using GPS, Wi-Fi and even the mobile network running on the device to get the exact location of the person. In fact, Google has made it advanced enough to give details like the device language which can help in case the injured person can talk in other languages.
Google has done pilot tests in the last few months to see its impact and the company has liked the overall performance. It ran over 20 million emergency calls and found the feature was able to share the location with the support teams.
The company is also using AI which has been trained to work across different scenarios like a moving vehicle, emergency in a remote city or a busy one.
The company says ELS doesn’t need a separate app to work on Android phones running version 6.0 or later. The location sharing is done privately, and only available to the emergency support team and not collected by the company.
It is free and only triggered when you make an emergency call or send a message. It is only going to work in the Uttar Pradesh region initially with other states likely to be added in the coming months.
