SAMSUNG is looking to launch a potentially life-saving new feature, that will put its handsets on par with Apple’s iPhones.
It’s a feature that everyone hopes they’ll never have to use, because it is for emergencies only.
According to a report from AndroidPolice, Samsung is looking to roll out car crash detection to a select number of devices, including the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and the new Galaxy S24.
The feature has existed on iPhones since 2022, and was introduced to Google Pixel phones even earlier in 2019.
By analysing data from its motion sensors, GPS and microphone, a phone can tell when it has been inside a car that has suffered a collision.
It is designed to help contact emergency responders and inform loved ones quickly if the owner of the phone is unable to.
Can the feature really save lives?
Want the short answer? Yes.
In July last year, a California resident survived a 400-foot plunge into a canyon thanks to the man’s iPhone 14’s crash detection feature alerting authorities.
The LA County Sheriff’s Department told ABC News at the time that is received a distress signal from the device at approximately 11pm.
The iPhone has beamed authorities accurate location information that allowed the Sheriff’s Department to launch a search and rescue team for the man.
The man was found bleeding and trapped in the wreckage of his vehicle, roughly 400-feet below the road.
Leader of the search and rescue team, Mike Leum, told reporters it was a near-miss, and that without the iPhone’s assistance, the man’s chances of survival were slim.
“The majority of calls we get there over the sides usually are fatal,” he said.
“I believe that if we didn’t have that good location information in a timely manner, he probably would’ve bled out.”
Samsung hasn’t yet officially announced it is working on the feature.
But Android Police’s Mishaal Rahman, who has a strong track record with Android leaks, discovered a hidden ‘Car Crash Detect Wakeup’ feature deep inside his Samsung Z Fold 5.
“I was messing with the Tasker app on my Galaxy Z Fold 5 to fix an issue I was having,” he writes.
“To my surprise, when the Tasker app listed all the sensors available on my Galaxy Z Fold 5, I found a “Car Crash Detect Wakeup” sensor in the list.
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“This was a shocking discovery, because Samsung currently doesn’t offer a car crash detection feature on any of its Galaxy phones.”
The crash detection sensor was also present on Rahman’s Galaxy S24 Ultra, but not on a Galaxy S23 Ultra unit.
“Digging deeper, I learned that this “Car Crash Detect Wakeup” sensor is actually a composite sensor, a type of virtual sensor that processes and fuses data from one or more underlying physical sensors,” Rahman continues.
“The sensor is designed to not allow for batching sensor events so as to immediately report potential car crashes to apps reading the sensor.”
The Sun has contacted Samsung for comment.
