Can't call 911

[canadiancow]

This came up on freenode IRC in #android yesterday, and I thought it was worth mentioning here.

Last Thursday (Sep 17 2009), a patch was committed to the Android source.
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=pla...c98982d43c7deb

This patch fixes a null pointer exception that can occur when the GPS is activated for E911.

In some countries (I believe in the United States, but not in Canada yet), when you dial 911 on a cell phone, if your phone knows your location (through GPS) it can send that to the 911 operator so that they know exactly where you are.

If you have GPS enabled in Android, whenever you dial an emergency number (112, 911, 999, etc), it activates the GPS to try to find your location.

However, with my Rogers HTC Magic running the stock ROM, if I have GPS enabled when I dial 911, the phone crashes and reboots. I tested it 10 times, and it crashed 9 of those times. If I disable the GPS, it doesn't crash.

Has anyone else experienced this issue with any Android devices? This doesn't happen to me with either of my Dreams running Cyanogen, only with my Magic with its stock ROM, and only when GPS is enabled in settings.

I tried calling Rogers yesterday to report it, but the tech said he'd never heard of the issue before, and he couldn't reproduce it. However, I didn't think to ask him if his GPS was enabled, so I may call back today.

There are others who have experienced this issue, but I'm not sure if it's a problem on all Rogers/HTC Android devices with the current firmware, or only with specific devices.

If it is a problem with all devices, then there's a huge problem.

[ClichePhoneName]

How exactly do you test it. Call 911 and tell the operator... Im just testing a call, thanks!

[canadiancow]

How exactly do you test it. Call 911 and tell the operator... Im just testing a call, thanks!

I believe there is a procedure for arranging a test call, but I have no idea what it is. However, I did my tests off the Rogers network (in a lab), so I wasn't worrying about that.

I was hoping (this might be a bad choice of words) that someone may have had to call 911 for a legitimate reason, and experienced the same issue.

If anyone has an isolated development network they can connect to and test on, that would be ideal.

[nhn]

I called 911 the other day from my stock-imaged Rogers Magic with GPS enabled and the call went through fine. Maybe an issue with your test lab??

[canadiancow]

I called 911 the other day from my stock-imaged Rogers Magic with GPS enabled and the call went through fine. Maybe an issue with your test lab??

Everything on the network side happened the same as any other call (I went through the logs) up until the crash/reboot, but the phone recognized it was calling an emergency number, and it turned on the GPS.

There is definitely an issue, otherwise there wouldn't have been a fix applied to the Android source, and I was talking to someone on T-Mobile who experienced the problem, but I'm just trying to see how widespread it is.

When you called, did you notice if the GPS icon started flashing?

[DiSTroy3d]

Lol first thing that popped into my mind after reading the topic title was "lawsuit"

[cbaltzer]

I also called 911 the other day from my Rogers Magic without any crashes. Though, I'm running CyanogenMod.

[nhn]

I didn't notice the GPS icon coming on, but my location settings have use wifi and enable GPS both on. I seem to recall there was a change to the API/SDK in regards to changing the GPS activation setting between 1.1 and 1.5. All of the toggle setting apps used to be able to set the GPS setting directly, but now it seems the setting is locked down. Maybe that had something to do with the issue.

[canadiancow]

I also called 911 the other day from my Rogers Magic without any crashes. Though, I'm running CyanogenMod.

Again, I know it works with CyanogenMod. 10/10 went through on CM, and 1/10 on the stock ROM.

I didn't notice the GPS icon coming on, but my location settings have use wifi and enable GPS both on. I seem to recall there was a change to the API/SDK in regards to changing the GPS activation setting between 1.1 and 1.5. All of the toggle setting apps used to be able to set the GPS setting directly, but now it seems the setting is locked down. Maybe that had something to do with the issue.

All (both) Rogers Android devices run 1.5 though.