APPLE WATCH SOS
One selling point for me (as a septuagenarian, living on my own) when I bought my Apple Watch Series 4 last autumn, was the fact that it could automatically send an alarm to the emergency services, if the wearer should fall and lose consciousness. The Apple Store salesperson assured me that this facility should soon be available in the UK but, to the best of my knowledge, this has not happened yet. Do you know if and when this might be available? by F b REED
ROb SAyS…
Apple UK says the Fall Detection feature has been available in this country since its inception. However, you need to enable it on your devices for it to be triggered. To do that, head to the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and tap the Apple Watch tab. Next, tap Emergency SOS and turn Fall Detection on.
A fall alert is only triggered in the event of a hard fall. At this point, your Watch will tap your wrist and ask you to confirm that you are OK. If it doesn’t detect movement for more than a minute, your Watch will begin a 30-second countdown and repeatedly tap your wrist and sound an alert, with the alert getting louder each time. If you, or no-one else nearby responds, your Watch will automatically call the emergency services and play an audio message which tells them your current location (latitude/ longitude). The message will continue to play until the call ends or you or a paramedic stops it from playing.
If you need to trigger an Emergency SOS call, without relying on fall detection, simply press and hold the side button on your Watch until the Emergency SOS slider appears. Continuing to press the side button will start a countdown, then trigger an emergency call. Alternatively, drag the Emergency SOS slider to begin the Emergency SOS call manually.
Before enabling Emergency SOS and Fall Detection: first, add any contacts (friends, family) that you’d like to be notified in the event of an emergency – you can do this from the Health app on iPhone under Medical ID; secondly, make sure that Wrist Detection on your Watch is active. Open the Settings app on your Watch, tap Passcode, and then turn on Wrist Detection if it’s not already enabled.