Comment by ButlerianJihad
2 days ago
> in case of emergency, but its[sic] been powered off
I can't speak for Apple iPhone in particular, but I would never expect any computing device to immediately come to life and be functional if I've left it shut off and disconnected for more than two months in any case.
Most of us may be familiar with powering-up a Windows or Linux machine, and then waiting through 4 hours of updates before the system becomes available again. You would do well to power up your old hardware and let it update and connect. If only to test it for fitness of purpose. Otherwise, you shouldn't pretend that it'll be available to you in emergencies.
Thank you,
It's been on my mental to-do list to do a 911 test call (with pre-authorization from my 911 center) from the device at some point, but I've been procrastinating. I decided to try this today.
I didn't expect updates to get in the way because they are usually not required immediately. For example, Windows will force an update eventually but it has to download it first and you can use the computer while it is doing that. I've never had a problem with being unable to use a device due to missing updates, except for an Xbox One which I think was new out of the box.
I did expect charging the device to take some time, like 5 to 10 minutes. I know this isn't good for some kinds of emergencies, but for others it might be okay, so I think it would still be better to have than not have; however, I severely underestimated the time it takes to charge the device though. It took between 60 and 80 minutes to power on. After that, it said the temperature was too hot to operate, which I think was because my car was off and it was hot outside. I took the phone inside at this point and let it cool off while charging connected to my laptop. Then I tried to call the non-emergency number (the one listed here: [1]) from my JMP VoIP phone, and I got no response. I'm not sure if it was because they didn't answer or because of an error in the software I'm using [2], as I've made other calls to Vanilla (the gift card company)'s automated systems today and some of the calls seemed to get no response. I don't want to spam them by calling over and over again until it works though, so I'm going to wait until a different day to try this.
I found a YouTube video [3] that suggested buying a pre-paid feature phone for $20 at Walmart [4], with the caveat that this will not send GPS location data. Maybe I'll end up buying one of these. Ideally I would get a cellular-enabled device that is designed to hold a charge for years if unused, but I'm not aware of any device like that. Or maybe I could get a USB modem like this $20 one I found on Amazon [5], and then I could connect it to my laptop, but I'm not sure if those can make 911 calls.
Good catch on the typo. I saw your message right before I went to sleep and considered editing it, but I thought it would be weird to edit but not reply so I decided to wait until today to do both, and now I'm out of time to edit the post.
[1] https://texasecc.org/contact [2] https://app.cheogram.com [3] https://invidious.nerdvpn.de/watch?v=HSu9tnnpKXg [4] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Tracfone-TCL-Flip-3-16GB-Gray-Pre... [5] https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Router-300Mbps-Hotspot-Unloc...