Add an emergency contact to your locked Samsung Galaxy
April 5, 2021
Did you know that you can set an emergency contact for the police or paramedics to call from your locked Samsung Galaxy mobile phone? If you’re ever in an emergency it could save your life!
Emergency Contact Samsung Galaxy
You do this by creating a dedicated ICE Emergency Contact group in your contacts and adding in your key emergency contacts, and then enabling the calling of emergency contacts from your lock screen. You can even set multiple ICE (in case of emergency) contacts.
Create a dedicated ICE Emergency Contacts group in your contacts
Open the App Menu from your home screen
Open the Contacts App
Tap the Groups button (displayed top right)
A list of default groups will display – select the ICE contacts group
Tap Edit
Add your emergency contacts
Hit Save when you’re done
Enable the calling of emergency contacts from your lock screen
Ensure your Samsung Galaxy screen is locked and then access the lock screen (but don’t unlock it)
Hold the phone icon in the lower left corner and drag it to the centre of the screen
Once the keypad appears hit the Emergency button
From the screen that comes up you can add your emergency contacts
Hitting the + symbol to add each new contact – you can select up to 3 from the ICE
contacts group you created earlier
Once you’ve followed the steps above, you’ll have your Samsung Galaxy emergency ready. Hopefully it’s never needed, or if it is, it’s because someone has found your lost mobile phone and calls the emergency contact to get your phone back to you. (Wouldn’t that be nice?!)
Did you know your Samsung mobile also has an SOS feature?
The SOS feature enables you to send notice of your approximate location and any visual/auditory surroundings to the mobile phone of a contact you set in advance. It should NOT be used as a replacement for an emergency call to 000.
In the unfortunate event you need to use the SOS message feature, it can be activated by taping your power button 3 times and pictures from your front and rear camera will immediately be sent to the emergency SOS contacts you set. It will also send a message indicating you need help and will include your exact location and an audio recording. But this SOS feature cannot be used unless you set it up first. While we hope you never need to use the SOS feature, there is no time like the present to set it up.
How to set the SOS feature
Go to your Settings menu and hit Advanced Features
Select Send SOS messages
Read and agree to the Terms and Conditions to set up the contact person
Once you hit Agree a pop up with give you the option to add at least one contact to send messages to.
Once you click ADD you can then select the recipient from your contacts or create a new contact. The recipient you select will need to have a mobile phone number.
Once you’ve selected the contact or contacts, it’s set up.
But wait, there’s more?
There sure is!
If you have a Samsung Gear S3 smartwatch, you can also send SOS messages from your watch. It works the same way, by pressing the Home key on your watch 3 times. But you first need to set your SOS message contacts in Gear Manager.
NOTE about the SOS message feature:
Just remember over time that the feature is active! You don’t want to accidently hit the button three times and send a message you didn’t mean to send! (we’ve read reports of this happening whilst on the loo!) Share this with your Samsung loving friends so they can set this up too!