To remind iPhone 10 users not to try reboot their phone this way! Am mortified!

[cricketmum84]

So my phone had a weird glitch today where the screen froze on a particular warning box. I could see the home screen behind the box but was totally unresponsive.

I tried rebooting the phone by pressing volume button and the off button together, phone started to make a siren type noise.... followed by 4 calls from an unknown number which I couldn't answer because the screen was frozen.

Within 5 minutes I had a police van outside and 2 huge policemen with tasers knocking on the door. I apologised profusely and they came and searched the house before leaving. They were really nice and understanding but I felt like a right idiot. Just mortified for wasting their time.

For future reference if you hold down the volume button and the on/off button it contacts the emergency services. If you are ever in a situation where you need help but cannot speak you need to know this!

If you are a dickhead who has frozen your phone you need to press up volume, down volume quickly and then hold down on/off button.

That explains what happened to me when I was driving the other day and phone was in pocket. Jumped out of my skin when the siren went off and next thing I know I had “what service do you require” coming through the hands free in the car. I was mortified.

That's useful to know for if I ever swap phones, because on my current android phone that's the hard reboot option! I can absolutely see myself screwing this up with an iphone if I didn't know.

cricketmum84 I’m with you. It was set as default on my iPhone

lhastingsmua what you say is not correct for all phones. I've just turned it OFF in my settings. This is the first time I heard about the setting. I certainly didn’t turn it on

This is an urban myth

No it isn't. You can read all about this feature at support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208076

i thought that you needed to press the on/off button five times quickly to call emergency services.

I'm so glad I read this, I just got an iPhone 8 and checked the settings and it's set up to make an emergency sound while calling emergency services if I press the side button 5 times. My toddler often plays with my phone... maybe not any more! I had no idea this existed.

Aguamenti I was trying to get my phone into the holder in the car when it happened and my phone was unlocked so it happened with not much effort.