Archive for September 21, 2017

Emergency SOS In iOS 11: What It Is And Why You Should Care

Posted in Tips with tags on September 21, 2017 by itnerd

There’s a new feature in iOS 11 called Emergency SOS. The intent of this feature is to ensure that you can call emergency services if you cannot safely dial 9-1-1, 9-9-9, or whatever your emergency number is. But since iOS 11 has appeared, it’s created a lot of noise and controversy. Take for example this Tweet from the Toronto Police Service:

Clearly some people are not using this feature as it was intended. That’s a #fail.

The purpose of this article is to explain what this feature is and how it works. But to do that, let me go back to and explain where this feature came from because it isn’t a new feature. Apple first introduced this SOS feature in iOS 10.2. That likely came from requests from India to meet India Department of Telecommunications requirements for this feature. Since then this feature made its next appearance on watchOS last year. Now we’re seeing it on the iPhone. Here’s how it works.

First of all, it’s always on and you cannot turn it off. But you can change how it works. By default, when you press the sleep/wake button on the iPhone five times on a device running iOS 11, it brings up a slider menu that allows you to quickly slide a finger against the screen to place the emergency call. That’s designed to stop you from somehow activating this feature accidentally. However, you can change this behavior to make it completely automatic. Here’s how:

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Scroll down to “Emergency SOS.”
  3. Toggle on “Auto Call.”

What this will do is dial emergency services after a three second countdown that gives you enough time to cancel the call if it’s placed accidentally. This matches the behavior of the Apple Watch.

Now you can also send a text message or iMessage to people that you define as emergency contacts who will get a message from you and it will include your location. Emergency contacts can be set up in the Health app by doing the following:

  1. Open the Health app.
  2. Choose Medical ID.
  3. Select “Edit” in the top right corner.
  4. Scroll down to the Emergency Contacts section.
  5. Tap the “+” button to add an emergency contact.
  6. Repeat step 5 to add additional contacts.

There’s one other thing that this feature will do. It will temporarily disable TouchID if you actually make an emergency call. But if you cancel dialing emergency services, TouchID still gets disabled. In either case, you will need to enter a valid passcode to re-enable TouchID. This is handy if you want to discreetly disable TouchID as it leaves no visual indication that this has been done.

I should also note that when the iPhone X comes out, this feature will work a little bit differently. Emergency SOS will be activated by pressing the side button and the volume up button simultaneously, rather than pressing the side button five times. It will also disable FaceID since the iPhone X will not come with TouchID.

This is a great safety feature and I encourage you to read this Apple support document for the Apple Watch, and this Apple support document for the iPhone to get more information on this key feature. Just don’t needlessly try it out. Trust me. It will work if God forbid you need it and emergency services have better things to do than answer your test call.

 

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Review: 2018 Hyundai Elantra GT Sport Ultimate – Part 4

Posted in Products with tags on September 21, 2017 by itnerd

The 2018 Hyundai Elantra GT Sport Ultimate is a small car packed with a lot of technology in it. Let’s start with the safety aspects of the vehicle:

  • It has blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alerts. The former is great because it doesn’t just warn you about vehicles in your blind spot, but it generates those warnings based on the speed and relative distance of the vehicle in your blind spot. That adds an extra layer of safety. The latter makes sure that you don’t crash your Elantra GT Sport into anything or anyone when you are backing out of a space at Home Depot and big pick up trucks are obscuring your view.
  • Headlights are of the LED variety which are not only very bright and fill the road with usable light, but also have a feature called high beam assist which flips the high beams on automatically on dark roads, and turns them off automatically when the car senses oncoming traffic.
  • It has a back up camera with excellent clarity and a great range of vision. It also has lines on the screen to help you to position your car when backing into a parking space or parallel parking. However, I will note that sensors to warn you when you might be coming too close to an object are missing.
  • You get a very advanced cruise control system that adapts to traffic conditions in a couple of ways. Not only will it slow down and speed up relative to the car in front of you, it is also capable of dealing with stop and go traffic to the point that it will come to a complete stop and then start itself up again. Once I learned to trust the system, I found it to be very handy in terms of dealing with the traffic that the highways of Toronto tends to have.
  • You get autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection which will bring the Elantra GT Sport to a stop if it detects a car or a person in front of it, and you take no action to avoid said car or person.
  • You get a lane departure warning system which not only warns you when you drift out of your lane, but it’s capable of automatically guiding you back into your lane by correcting your steering for you. The system has three settings and when set to normal, I found the system to be subtle when correcting my steering to the point that I wouldn’t notice it if I were not looking for it to be doing its job.
  • The Elantra GT Sport also monitors how you drive the car and suggests when you should take a break. This is very handy in avoiding driver fatigue on long drives. I’ve reviewed cars with this feature, but never at this price point. Thus this is a bit of a game changer.
  • Seven airbags are standard including driver’s knee airbag.

The only thing that is missing from all this safety tech is tire pressure monitoring. While not required here in Canada, it is odd in 2017 to see a car without it.

The Elantra GT Sport also comes with a lot of technology to make life easier for you:

  • Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are included along with Hyundai’s own navigation and infotainment system. They’re all displayed on an 8″ screen which is extremely sharp and viewable in all lighting conditions. The key thing about this is that Hyundai has given drivers the choice of three different systems that allow them to use the infotainment system in the way that fits them. Plus any car company that doesn’t have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is going lose sales in this day and age. One thing that I noticed was that the infotainment system was significantly faster than ones in other Hyundai products that I’ve tried recently.
  • There’s a seven speaker Infinity audio system that sounds great. Everything from The Pet Shop Boys to Origa sounded great on this stereo.
  • Besides having a USB connector for your phone, there’s a wireless charger that uses the Qi standard. That means that any Android phone that supports wireless charging, or the new iPhone 8 or iPhone X will work with the wireless charger.

But the key piece of technology that you should be aware of is BlueLink which is new from Hyundai Canada and it’s making its first appearance in the Hyundai Elantra Sport GT. It’s a cutting edge telematics system that gives you everything from remotely starting the car from an app on your smartphone, local search, checking on the health of your car, to automatic dialing of emergency services if you get into an accident. I did an In Depth repot on BlueLink here and I encourage you to read it so that you can see how useful BlueLink is. Another data point is that America’s version of BlueLink was ranked by Consumers Reports as the number 2 telematics system that’s out there. I fully expect that Hyundai Canada’s version will rank just as high if not higher. It’s free for five years and once you see it, you’ll want it in your Elantra Sport GT.

The final part of this review will tie up some loose ends and I’ll give you my closing thoughts on this hot hatch. Stay tuned for that tomorrow.

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