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Emergency SOS is a feature on iPhones that allows you to contact emergency services, including hospitals and police, and alert your emergency contacts that you are in trouble.
This feature is useful if you’re new to an area, have made only a few friends, or are travelling to a new place. Anyways, given the state of the world, it is a useful feature to have on your iPhone.
However, many people do want to turn off SOS on their iPhones due to many reasons, such as:
- Accidental activation: You can turn on the SOS feature on your iPhone by pressing and holding the side button and one volume button until you see a slider. Then, you’ll have to drag the slider to activate the emergency feature. Sometimes, people have accidentally switched on the feature by mistake. This could be embarrassing if you’re in a meeting or private conversation.
- Privacy issues: Another issue with the SOS feature on iPhone is that it sends your location to the emergency services. This is necessary as when you’re in a desperate situation, you may or may not know your exact location. However, in case of accidental activation, it may trigger privacy issues. Or, if your iPhone gets stolen or accessed by someone else, they could activate SOS to track your location.
- Battery drain: Finally, tuning on SOS can drain your battery more quickly as the location is always turned on.
To protect your privacy and reduce battery drain, turn off your iPhone’s SOS. Read on to learn how to do this easily.
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Turn off SOS on iPhone
Follow the steps given below to turn off SOS on your iPhone:
- Head to Settings > Emergency SOS.
- Turn off the Call with Hold and Release or Call with 3 Presses option.
The best way is to turn on the Call Quietly feature at the bottom. If you turn on this feature, you can make a silent emergency call.
iPhone 14 users may have to turn off the Call After Severe Crash option. You will see this option in Settings > Emergency SOS.
It’s common for people to be confused about the difference between the SOS feature and the ‘SOS Only‘ message on their iPhone. The ‘SOS Only’ message indicates that your phone has lost its cellular connection, which means you won’t be able to make a regular call to someone. However, you can still make an emergency call using the SOS feature.
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