5 cool things your cell phone can do

[Cavey]

5 Things You Never Knew Your Cell Phone Could Do

For all the folks with cell phones. (This should be printed and kept in your car, purse, and wallet. Good information to have with you.)


There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.

Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:


FIRST Emergency


The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find

Yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an

Emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to

Establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly, this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.


SECOND Have you locked your keys in the car?


Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys

In the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on

their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot

From your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will

unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

Editor's Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked Our car over a cell phone!'


THIRD Hidden Battery Power


Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the

keys *3370#. Your cell phone will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell phone next time.


FOURTH How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?


To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following

Digits on your phone: *#06#. A 15-digit code will appear on thescreen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe. When your phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card, your phone will be totally useless. You probably won't get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

And Finally....

FIFTH Free Directory Service for Cells


Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for411 information calls when they don't have to. Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial: (800)FREE411, or (800) 373-3411 without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone now.

[teg_boya]

Originally posted by Cavey
....interestingly, this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.


THIRD Hidden Battery Power


Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the

keys *3370#. Your cell phone will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell phone next time.

i dont know about anyone else but these most defs do not work on my 8130

[Cavey]

I never actually tried any of them, was an email I got. Thought maybe someone else would try it out

[e36bmw///]

nm

[teg_boya]

good bs

[jhmed]

I wouldn't call the 1800 number... sounds fishy...

The unlocking the car door one is complete bullshit.

[rmk]

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/cellphones.asp

[mdeleon]

112 worked for me...i have an iphone and when i dialed the numbers it appeared as "1 (12)" on the screen, if that makes any difference. the battery thing didnt work, for some reason i got a message on my screen saying "Error performing request. No Network Service"

[tabouli]

Ordering a pizza didn't make the list?

[Jay911]

From a 911 operator who has to deal with this crap all the time..

112 is the European equvalent of 911. In the European Union, it's 112; in Britain, it's 999; in Australia, it's 000. I think the Wikipedia article on 911 has a decent list of which numbers are used where.

Your phone will recognize 112 so that if you ever travel to the EU, you will be able to dial for emergency services just as you can at home. North American cellular companies are required by law to connect emergency calls dialed via the 9-1-1 emergency number regardless of a) how many "minutes" you have or 2) what provider you are on. So if I, on my Rogers phone, somehow find myself in an area where my phone says "no service" but I know I'm in range of a Telus tower (i.e. down in Kananaskis, etc), my phone can and will use the Telus tower to complete any 9-1-1 call I make.

Cell phone manufacturers a decade or more ago thought it would be neat, handy, helpful, etc., to allow "one touch" access to 9-1-1. This means, if you hold down the 1 or the 9 key - or the one marked 'SOS' - (on older phones it'll be the one that's shown in red instead of the blue/black/etc lettering on the rest of the keypad), even if the keypad is locked,, your phone will dial 9-1-1. This was supposed to be a helpful thing so that if you're being attacked, etc., you wouldn't have to fumble around unlocking your phone, remembering your PIN, etc. Also the bit about 9-1-1 calls being free is hopefully pretty obvious - nobody should have to spend money to report an emergency.

The problem with the above is 99.995% of the public stuffs their phone in their pocket/purse/backpack/etc, and locked or not, the phone can bump up against something and trigger that 9-1-1 key. In 2001, when I started working for 9-1-1, we took 6,000 false 9-1-1 cell phone calls per month at the center that covers Calgary and area. Yes, that's one every 7 or so minutes, 24 hours of every day of the month. Sometimes it's humorous - you get to hear some guy in an elevator trying to hit on a girl, or driving along singing along (badly!) with the car stereo. Sometimes you get to listen to someone take a leak or a dump. A lot of the time all we end up hearing is someone walking along (all the crap in their pocket/purse clashing around against the phone, sounding like a tool set in a washing machine). But it's still tying up the 911 center trying to decide if you're running away from someone chasing you with an ax, or out for a morning jog.

The 911 center will phone you back if they don't get a satisfactory response from your initial call. The purpose of this is to check out whether or not you are safe. It's not your buddy Joe playing a prank call on you. We're not picking your number out of a hat, or dialing random numbers to see if anyone will pick it up. If someone says they are from 911 and they're calling because your phone dialed them, that's what the deal is - your phone called 911, and we need to know if you're OK.

Even phones with no SIM card can dial 9-1-1. They come up with no phone number on the call center's display. That doesn't help the situation, so we can't call you back to find out if there's an emergency, or if the line drops (as, as you're all familiar with, cell phones tend to do).

A lot of newer phones will lock into an 'emergency' mode once the emergency number is dialed. This is not something that 911 has done to you or your phone. It's not something that 911 can "unlock". Most of the time your phone will say on the screen "Emergency calls only. Press '#' to exit." If following the instructions on the screen doesn't seem to work, take the battery off and put it back on. If all else fails, you'll have to take it to your phone provider for help or service.

9-1-1 operators and centers would really appreciate it if you would disable the automatic dialing of 9-1-1 from your phone. It's designed to be a quick, easy-to-remember number to dial, so you shouldn't have to put it in a speed key or anything like that. Having said that, don't hesitate to call if you DO need help.

(As for the other stuff on the OP's post, Snopes covers most of it as complete rubbish. You can't unlock doors with a cell phone; you can't change battery power level with a key combination; etc.)

[TaiChino]

I haven't tried the unlock thing, but even if it does work in some cases, there are probably some variables to consider:

1. Phone being CDMA (Telus/Bell) or GSM (Rogers/Fido)
Does the other persons cell phone have to be the same band?
2. Frequency of the keyless entry (Compustars are FM transmitters)

[shirshamshir]

112 dont work for me
extra battery dont work
nothing works, damn
would've been cool though

[Jay911]

Originally posted by TaiChino
I haven't tried the unlock thing, but even if it does work in some cases, there are probably some variables to consider:

1. Phone being CDMA (Telus/Bell) or GSM (Rogers/Fido)
Does the other persons cell phone have to be the same band?
2. Frequency of the keyless entry (Compustars are FM transmitters)

99.999% of the keyless entry fobs are RF (FM) wireless. Very few are IR (infrared) and almost none are sonic, which is what they'd have to be to work with a cell phone.

Cell phones are designed to work with the human voice, so they filter out everything but those frequencies (between 300 and 3000 Hz (hertz)).

The lowest frequency you're likely to see in a car alarm/key fob transmitter is 50 MHz (megahertz), aka 50,000 hz.

The people who find that this "works" are, 9 times out of 10, doing this in their driveway with the "other" key fob being "at home", inside the house 50 feet away - still well within range of the car's receiver.

[dj_rice]

The cell phone door unlock no workie, it was busted on Mythbusters IIRC

[gpomp]

[shirshamshir]

what does lacking or unlacking mean?

[audimaniaR8]

the door unlock works for me, from three miles away

[BlackArcher101]

Damn there's a lot of gullible (read: dumb) people these days. Common sense can bust most of these e-mail forwards.

[francisc006]

*#06# that one actually worked on my blackberry pearl it gave me a "IMEI"

all the others didnt...

[szw]

HOly fuck i can't believe you morons even tried this bullshit. Someone should just delete the painfully retarded original post. This stuff should be obviously fake to anyone with half a brain.

On a less angry note, the free 411 could possibly work, lots of free services available these days, wouldn't surprise me but I don't know about that particular one.