Samsung’s SOS Feature Leaked the Sound of Me Peeing

One of the lesser-known but several years-old features of Samsung's phones and tablets is "SOS messaging." If the function is set up ahead of time, fast-pressing the power button three times sends a series of photos and audio to your pre-selected set of contacts. The phone automatically takes a front and rear-facing photo, and five seconds of audio.

You can choose up to four people to burden with this evidence, presumably ones you trust to bust you out of a trunk or call the cops or do something proactive. I chose my boyfriend, and then completely forgot to tell him about it. (Full disclosure: I am extremely bad at keeping my phone locked, and frequently send butt-texts.)

You probably know where this story is going.

A year after setting it up and forgetting the feature existed, I accidentally smashed that power button three times in a row, while in the bathroom checking messages. Don't judge me, we all do it. A notification appeared: "Sending SOS messages." My boyfriend then received a photo of a tiled floor, a photo of my deeply confused face from the chin-up, and a five-second audio clip of loud urination.

A general rule for good UX is that it should be reasonably idiot-proof, but it looks like I'm not the only one who messed up SOS. Android Central user Envisious triggered the SOS messaging on their Note 5. The battery then died. They wrote, "I had 15 missed calls, 22 text, and my boyfriend was literally at my last location at the Metro rail looking for me!"

As far as I can tell, Samsung's phones are the only ones with this media-sending emergency feature. The iPhone has a similar distress-signal feature, but instead of taking photos and video automatically, it dials 911.

Now that I've established it's not my fault, I have a few questions for the designers of this feature:

Why? Typically, a function that would be potentially life-saving or crime-solving comes with some corporate hedging. The only explanation I can find for it is this very short tutorial, which takes the time to explain the acronym "SOS," but not a user scenario.

What if I was doing something truly freaky and mistakenly hit this magical emergency sequence? This is a Cheaters plot waiting to happen.

What if I set it up years ago, forget it exists, and send it to an ex-abuser or some other dangerous third party?

Why is there no "chicken prompt" to back out of sending? Once you've started this 10-20 second process, there is no stopping it.

Why doesn't it send a message along with the texts to tell the recipient of your last earthly moments that this is in fact a Real Emergency? Something along the lines of "This person has activated their SOS messaging and has chosen you to receive the following media."

FWIW, my boyfriend completely ignored my false alarm. So not only do I have a five-second clip of myself peeing, I have the confirmation that he would be fairly useless in an actual emergency. "That's a lot of pressure," he told me after the incident.

I've reached out to Samsung with these questions, and will update when I hear more.