A lot of my writing about emergency communications falls into two categories: smartphones and radios, because emergencies come in two varieties: personal and public. You are more likely to experience a dead, lost, or broken smartphone than you are a natural disaster that affects the mobile phone networks. Even if you are far away from civilization, I still think that a likely emergency will be personal one (getting lost, being injured), rather than a natural one (flash flood, avalanche, etc).
Today, I will be focused on the emergency smartphone. For years, in addition to “daily driver” smart phones, my family has also had cheap prepaid mobile phones for use in emergencies. For a long time these were flip phones with 30 minutes per month mobile plans, just enough to call for help if your primary phone is out of commission. Years ago, when the GSM standard changed in the US, I had to switch us over to cheap smartphones. Well, I didn’t have to but I decided that if I was going to buy new emergency phones, I figured they should do more than call or text. I would put mine in the glove box of my car and forget about it. Turns out that if you leave a smartphone in a car in the midwest, it’s only a matter of time before the battery swells. For me that matter of time was about 3 years.
So I am back shopping for a replacement emergency smartphone, and I am writing about my experience thus far.
The thing that makes a smartphone better than a flip phone is that it’s a tiny computer with a bunch of built-in radios. I know that sounds obvious, but if I wanted to configure a Raspberry Pi to run off a rechargeable battery with a touchscreen, camera, GPS, and mobile broadband, that device would be clunky, expensive, fragile, and far beyond my ability to design. Not that most smartphones are tough, but even the cheapest smartphones in protective cases are probably tougher than a Pi in a 3d printed case. There are a few personal scenarios where a phone gest used, I use colors to dictate them:
So the obvious use for a second phone is to do what my iPhone would do if it was able. I call this “Green Mode”. I’m not going to post to Insta or document the family’s beach vacation, but it does let me talk on the phone, text people, use the GPS for directions, and look things up on the Internet. This is the “everything’s cool, my phone just isn’t working” situation.
The other use for Green Mode on the backup phone is when my iPhone is working fine, but I am doing something dangerous. In the old days, when I was active in the hacker community, I would attend events like DefCon. There, I would take my prepaid flip phone instead of the smartphone that my work assigned to me, because I didn’t want to explain to the information security team that my phone got hacked, stolen, or drunkely fell into a pool. These days, my dangerous activities involve bicycles, rivers, and tents, but the danger for a smartphone is still very real.
The other time you need a phone is in a legitimate emergency. The FCC requires all phones sold in the US be able to dial 911 even without a sim card installed. The problem with emergency calling is that unless you are calling 911, the person that you are calling thinks it’s a normal call. My ex-wife never answered the phone when I called her. I am notoriously bad for missing text messages because I am gaming, or watching TV, or asleep.
In a fire department, dispatch doesn’t call on the phone, or even over the radio. They trigger the overhead alarm at the firehouse. Even now, in the age of mobile phones, overhead paging and intercom systems are how you get hold of someone when you have no idea where they are. As much as I have tried, I can’t get anyone in the family to sign off on an overhead paging system.
The other emergency comms system I am thinking about is the ability to yell for help over the Internet and wake up the house if necessary. I have been experimenting with an app called Zello. It turns your phone into a walkie-talkie to talk to other people that are also using the app, only it’s over the Internet so there is completely unlimited* range. (*not unlimited range from the mobile network) I am thinking about this app running on an old tablet or out of date smartphone with a set location in the home or office, like on a desk or an end table. The device just hangs on the wall doing stuff (displaying photos, showing weather info, displaying your security camera feed) and when someone calls for help with the app, the audio comes out of the device’s speakers. This app, combined with real time location data, can serve as a “kitchen table tactical ops center” for coordinating logistics for a family emergency.
The great thing about the Internet is that it’s almost everywhere. The great thing about smartphones is that almost everyone has one. The problem with smartphones is that without a decent signal, they don’t do much without help. If you live or work somewhere with poor signal, WiFi calling and messaging can be a lifesaver, but you are bound to that location. Prepaid mobile plans are cheap, but a gigabyte of data can go by fast if you aren’t careful. Fortunately you can pair your off-grid smartphone with some apps and hardware to use it as the compact mobile data terminal it was designed to be.
There are tons of other things that can be done with a smartphone with no sim installed, such as note taking, photography, video recording, and scanning QR codes for data/messages.