In an effort to improve the emergency services on your phones, companies like Apple and Google offer crash detection on their phones. If someone’s in a car crash, they sometimes cannot physically call emergency numbers. Phones detecting a crash and doing it for you can genuinely save lives. While some cars do detect crashes, it’s still useful to have a backup.
One of the first phones with these features was Google’s Pixel 4. More recently, we saw it with the iPhone 14. We haven’t seen a similar feature from Samsung’s house yet. However, Samsung might change that soon. Phones like the S24 lineup and even the Fold and Flip 5 currently do not support crash detection. However, this might change in the near future.
All Android phones have sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes. This, combined with loud sounds and sudden movements and some intelligent algorithms, determines whether you’re in a crash automatically. Your OS uses data from these sensors to determine whether you’re in a crash. Analyzing such data and constantly hunting for it isn’t something all phones can do, and it can hit resources, too. It also has to avoid needlessly notifying emergency authorities.
Pixels continuously collect data using low-power hardware, and their solution doesn’t occupy as much battery. While Google is trying to get other OEMs to use this solution, almost no one implemented it. The article from Android Police doesn’t say anything about Samsung implementing the same feature as Google. However, it suggests that Samsung is working on a car crash detection feature.
The author of the post was using the Tasker app, and the app lists a sensor called “Car Crash Detect Wakeup.” However, this sensor is only on the S24 Ultra and not on last year’s S23 Ultra. This sensor is a virtual sensor that processes data from other physical sensors like the accelerometer. It’s responsible for immediately reporting on any potential crashes.
There’s also a hidden system app on One UI 6.1 called MoccaMobile. The code describes starting and stopping this sensor. There’s no UI here yet. However, it’s confusing since it’s also on much older One UI versions like One UI 5.1.1. It’s not present on One UI 5.1 and 5.0. It’s present for the Fold 5, however, and not on the S23 Ultra.
Samsung hasn’t commented on this yet, but we will probably get this feature on the Fold 5 and S24 Ultra soon with the One UI 6.1 software update. This update will also add Galaxy AI to these phones.
