A DYING cellphone battery is a hassle at the best of times, but in an emergency it could be a matter of life and death. Now Apple is developing software that devotes every last drop of battery juice to keeping an emergency call going.
Modern cellphones are essentially small computers that run high-speed processors, bright colour displays, and internet and Bluetooth connections, all of which can drain a fading battery fast. So if an emergency number is called, the software cuts out all unnecessary background processes, doing things such as making the processor idle and dimming the screen. Power-hungry applications 鈥� for example, those that use Wi-Fi to search for emails or tweets 鈥� are disabled too.
The software, described by Apple engineer Michael Lee in a last week, has two other emergency aids. It requires confirmation when the caller tries to hang up an emergency call, making it harder for a distressed caller to end a call by accident. And if someone can鈥檛 speak 鈥� because of an asthma attack, for example 鈥� they can send a preset voice message to the operator, while a speech synthesiser reads out the coordinates of their location.
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