I'm at home, sitting gently down on the couch, and I got a false warning on Fall Detection. I am not aware of any hard hit or bump on the AW4. It's on Watch OS 5.0.1.
I'm at home, sitting gently down on the couch, and I got a false warning on Fall Detection. I am not aware of any hard hit or bump on the AW4. It's on Watch OS 5.0.1.
Please explain.
In the brief time that I had a Series 4, when I wanted to enable it, there was a disclaimer in that screen saying that active people or people doing certain sports could get warnings even if they didn’t fall.
I am drawing my own conclusion by this in that the fall detection is not fail proof and thus can give false positives at time.
This surprises me because in nearly every review I've read the reviewer tried a fake fall to get a false positive and failed.
I knocked my watch of my bathroom sink and it gave me the fall detection. I was shocked because I wasn’t wearing the watch so I didn’t think that feature worked when not in use.
My very irate wife just gave me a call to complain about the fall detection feature. She is very active and was playing tennis and took a fall. The watch detected it, which was fine. But, she was wearing a glove and she wasn't sure what to do and was fumbling around for a while before she finally was able to touch the watch. Even then she wasn't sure whether or not it had called 911 (it hadn't) because she didn't fully understand how it works. I called 911 to let them know that if they got a call from the tennis center, to ignore it. Since I hadn't gotten a text message, I assumed that this was the case.
All of this made me realize that this feature is not ready for prime time in several common situations. Here is a major one. I live in Wisconsin and during the winter, my watch will be under 2 or 3 layers of clothing plus I will be wearing gloves. It is VERY common to fall on the ice here and the watch will detect this. But, if I was momentarily dazed a bit, it is very likely that it would take me more than a minute to fully access the watch to be able to touch it and stop it from calling 911! I have to get my glove off, get at the watch, etc. You see the problem.
Here is what I think needs to be changed to make this feature fully functional.
- I want the option to have the watch NOT automatically call 911 but just text my emergency contacts. With this option, it should tell me that by responding to the text with (say) "call 911", that will trigger the watch contacting 911 and giving the correct location. In practice, if I get a text message, I will try to call the person and if I can reach them, they can cancel the sequence or I can text back "ok" to cancel the sequence remotely.
- I think this should be a standard, not optional design change. If I take a fall and the watch doesn't move for one minute, start the sequence. However, if I start moving around, that should switch the watch to a mode where it will no longer passively call 911. I can then actively call 911 if injured, but if I just get up and become active again, that should shut off the sequence.
- I should be able to shut off the sequence by a Siri command, e.g., "Hey Siri, I am OK" or "Hey Siri, don't call 911", etc.
Until I can have some or all of these changes, I am going to have to turn off the feature. Unfortunately, this was one of the main reasons for buying the watch in the first place!
But, she was wearing a glove and she wasn't sure what to do and was fumbling around for a while before she finally was able to touch the watch. Even then she wasn't sure whether or not it had called 911 (it hadn't) because she didn't fully understand how it works.
Actually, that is what I thought myself but I called Apple support and was told that this is not the way it works. I was told that you must touch the screen to cancel the call. It does appear that in addition to indicating that you are OK, if you press the crown and return to the home screen, that also shuts off the sequence.
By the way, I thought she had fallen during tennis. That was not the case. She was just playing when it went into fall detection mode.
Even worse, a few hours later, she was trying on some clothing at a store and it again flipped into fall detection mode. I don't know what is going on with this yet. I will call Apple tomorrow. For now, I have turned off fall detection entirely on her watch.
Not a good start...
“If your Apple Watch detects that you're moving, it waits for you to respond to the alert and won't automatically call emergency services. If your Apple Watch detects that you're immobile for about a minute, it begins a 15-second countdown, while tapping you on the wrist and sounding an alert. The alert gets louder, so that you or someone nearby can hear it. When the countdown ends, your Apple Watch automatically contacts emergency services
FWIW, this is ambiguous about what happens if you are moving but do not respond to the alert. It's really not all that clear what happens in that case. And if the watch is mistaking normal movement for a fall, how do we know that it can be trusted to detect movement within a minute properly?
I spent quite a bit of team researching all of this and just spent 30 minutes on the phone talking to Apple support. It has been a very informative 24 hours...
Assuming that you move during the one minute and accidently hit the crown will trying to figure out what to do (exactly what my wife did). At that point, the fall detection screen disappears, which is not good. There is apparently a way to get back to that screen, but I forgot to ask how.