Nokia's cellphone for kidnap victims

Barry Fox, unflappable trawler of the FCC website, reports from New Scientist that Nokia has recently filed an application for a cellphone with covert emergency detection and broadcasting features. Unlike the emergency feature on your keyfob, which sounds a loud alarm and notifies potential kidnappers that you're a fighter, the Nokia phone pretends that it's off when it's actually using every available sensor to suck in data about your location and captors. Simply triggering a recessed panic button puts the cellie into "fake sleep" mode and tells it to capture as many pics, vids, and sounds as it can. The captured data is then encoded with GPS info and immediately sent to a call center or trusted friend, or stored for future transmission if a signal is not readily available (since you need to reenter a coverage area at some point for this device to be effective, we can safely rule out T-Mobile as a potential carrier). Keep in mind that this is just a patent, not a working product, so your safest course of action is still living inside your panic room 24/7.

[Via New Scientist and Smart Mobs]

[Evan Blass @ Jan 18th 2006 5:34PM]

Worst. Photoshopping. Ever.

[alleyn @ Jan 18th 2006 5:50PM]

HA! Poking fun at Tmobile always makes me LOL. I love you guys. Good show!

[tiuk @ Jan 18th 2006 5:53PM]

Don't you mean "Worst. MSPaint job. Ever."?

[Bill Clark @ Jan 18th 2006 6:03PM]

Yeah but will they pull a Sprint and refuse to give the cops the info?

[amigo @ Jan 18th 2006 6:04PM]

Maybe the worst photoshop but the hillarity (

[Bobak Kamaei @ Jan 18th 2006 6:13PM]

if such a system does ever prove to be helpful wouldn't having a patent on it be morally incorrect. do these companies have no ethics.

[chuck @ Jan 18th 2006 6:34PM]

What's up with all the hating on T-Mobile? Coverage is great where I live... better than the rest, actually. Oh, and Bobak, did you JUST figure out that the vast majority of large corporations are completely unethical?

[Mandarin @ Jan 18th 2006 7:29PM]

i used to own a Sidekick 1. Odd that i hardly get any coverage when im only 1 mile from Danger's Main office..

[Connor @ Jan 18th 2006 7:46PM]

So people who plan to get kidnapped will buy this phone? I don't think I understand the target market.

[Uranium @ Jan 18th 2006 7:54PM]

The T-Mobile joke doesn't bother me, but to be fair they have very good coverage in the Portland Oregon area, as well as in Seattle.

[Andrei @ Jan 18th 2006 8:28PM]

You know what Nokia should make? A cellphone that burns like the one that happens to the device in Mission: Impossible whenever someone punches in the wrong code; to prevent profitability in theft.

[SteveoDBGT @ Jan 18th 2006 8:30PM]

Wow my phone (Nokia 6670) is a saving phone? Cool...

I'll remember that next time I get kidnapped for 1 million dollars.

[Mike @ Jan 18th 2006 9:30PM]

I thought that this idea was pretty decent at first, but then i began to think.
In order to find out the target market we tend to look at what age group is most vulnerable to kidnapping. It is my belief that the majority of kidnappings happen to children under the age of eleven. If my estimation is somewhat correct I then ask another question. How many people under the age of eleven are walking around with cell phones?

[Elias G. @ Jan 18th 2006 10:02PM]

If you're under 11 and a potential kidnapee, then you probably do have a cellphone. Think about kids in Colombia and such places, where the children of wealthy people are often kidnapped.

[frank @ Jan 18th 2006 10:55PM]

Okay, let me completely redirect the comments here with a (possibly) stupid question...

What's with all the cracks on T-Mobile's coverage? My phone works in all the same places that any other GSM phone works. If the answer is "Well, you get dinged for roaming charges", then I guess the real question is, what kind of chump ass loser pays roaming fees in this age of National Coverage plans? I was just on a road trip with a friend. I've got T-Mo, he's got Sprint. We drove from Chicago to Marquette, MI, I had service almost the whole time, he almost never did.
Please, clue me in.

[triticale @ Jan 18th 2006 10:57PM]

Well, there was that carjacking incident in Atlanta some years back. The victim, wife of a pro athlete IIRC, pocket-dialed 911 and then found reasons to describe the crime, the car and passing landmarks in her conversation with the carjackers. She was spectacularly rescued.

[Josh S. @ Jan 18th 2006 11:26PM]

Maybe Nokia will make a phone for children, like the Firefly (is that what it's called?)

If so, this would be a pretty good selling point. Though there is a good chance the crooks will know about this.

[chuck @ Jan 19th 2006 12:28AM]

Frank-

T-Mobile just has a bad reputation from several years ago when their coverage wasn't so great. But now, especially with 850mhz roaming agreements, their coverage is extremely competitive with all of the other national carriers, and T-Mobile has even won awards for the best call quality in several regions. And in Chicago (I'm a Chicagoan too :-) ) T-Mobile is considered one of the best carriers.

Just to give you an idea, though, if you and your friend went to Marquette two years ago, your coverage would've stopped once you passed Green Bay.

[Nate MC @ Jan 19th 2006 12:37AM]

Oh yeah, cuz kidnappers would never figure out how to throw a phone out the window into a river etc or jsut take the battery out.

[snac @ Jan 19th 2006 2:13AM]

sounds like a good idea to me. it has the potential to save lives, and be a big selling point for the paranoid (victims and mothers?).

[Ryan @ Jan 19th 2006 9:10AM]

I agree, Tmobile just plain stinks. So does sprint.

[TyreDurgan @ Jan 19th 2006 10:17AM]

I agree with Chuck. What's with the lack of love for the T? Where I live it's the only phone that works. Sprint, Nextel (Before it was Sprint), Cingular, and Verizon all can't hold up to T-Mobile in my area.

[TyreDurgan @ Jan 19th 2006 10:18AM]

I agree with Chuck. What's with the lack of love for the T? Where I live it's the only phone that works. Sprint, Nextel (Before it was Sprint), Cingular, and Verizon all can't hold up to T-Mobile in my area.

[TyreDurgan @ Jan 19th 2006 10:19AM]

I agree with Chuck. What's with the lack of love for the T? Where I live it's the only phone that works. Sprint, Nextel (Before it was Sprint), Cingular, and Verizon all can't hold up to T-Mobile in my area.

[TyreDurgan @ Jan 19th 2006 10:24AM]

I agree with Chuck. What's with the lack of love for the T? Where I live it's the only phone that works. Sprint, Nextel (Before it was Sprint), Cingular, and Verizon all can't hold up to T-Mobile in my area.

[TyreDurgan @ Jan 19th 2006 10:25AM]

Umm.... WTF? ^^^

[Nick @ Jan 19th 2006 10:28AM]

T-Mobile used to be called one2one in the UK but we used to call it one2none since that was more accurate...

[Rusty Shackleford @ Jan 19th 2006 11:55AM]

How about making a phone that when you press a secret key combination, it fires a 9mm copper jacketed hollowpoint bullet right into the brain of your kidnapper, thus ending the hostage situation. The phone could then automatically dial 911, and in thirty minutes the cops can show up to draw a chalk line around the kidnapper's body and then take a report.

[pdk @ Jan 19th 2006 8:42PM]

um, i think there is a serivce like that, only it works on any phone.
its called 911?

[anonymous @ Jan 20th 2006 9:38AM]

"13. I thought that this idea was pretty decent at first, but then i began to think.
In order to find out the target market we tend to look at what age group is most vulnerable to kidnapping. It is my belief that the majority of kidnappings happen to children under the age of eleven. If my estimation is somewhat correct I then ask another question. How many people under the age of eleven are walking around with cell phones?"

Where I live, each and everyone.

And then, kidnapping children is more or less an American phenomenon... no if I lived in the States I wouldn't let my children walk around freely either.

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[Finished.Law.School @ Mar 5th 2006 10:35PM]

That Nokia is ugly. But most Nokias are ugly...