Older adults: a slow fall, a soft sound and a voice asking you to cancel

The app on your phone detects when you fall, and gives you a short time to cancel. If you do not cancel, it sends an alert to people you chose in advance, up to 10 people, who are called contacts in the app. The alert includes text messages and calls from your phone. Contacts who have installed the app get an alarm in it, that is, a loud ring that is heard even when their phone is on silent. Contacts who are connected to Telegram, a messaging app like WhatsApp, also get the alert there.

The 'Older adults' profile suits older people, who may fall when they lose their balance. A profile is a setting in the app that decides which falls the phone detects, which sound it plays and how much time you have to cancel before an alert is sent. There are three profiles: 'Hiking and outdoors', 'Field work' and 'Older adults'. This page explains in detail what the 'Older adults' profile does.

The phone detects falls only when the app is turned on. You turn it on with the switch at the top of the app's main screen, and then it says "On" next to it.

How the phone detects a fall

Older people sometimes fall slowly, as they lose their balance, and not all at once. So in this profile the phone also detects a slow fall, with no drop before the impact. The phone detects the fall with its motion sensor only. For the phone to decide that you fell, all of these things need to happen, in this order:

1. There is an impact with a force of 4 times the force of gravity or more. In this profile the phone does not need to drop before the impact.
2. After the impact the phone waits 2.5 seconds, and then checks for 20 seconds that it is lying almost without movement.
3. The phone is lying at a different angle from the one it was at before the impact.
4. The phone's screen is off.

If one of these things did not happen, the phone does not decide that you fell, and nothing is sent. Ordinary steps can also reach the force of such an impact, but after them there is movement, so nothing happens.

The phone checks the screen only once, 22.5 seconds after the impact. If the screen is on at that moment, the phone assumes you are using it, and does not detect a fall. If the screen turned off by itself before that moment, the fall is detected.

What the phone will not detect

The detection is not perfect, so it is important to know 3 things:

• The phone needs to be on you at home too, for example in a pocket. A phone lying on the table will not detect that you fell.
• A very slow slide to the floor, without an impact with a force of 4 times the force of gravity, will not be detected.
• If you have a smartwatch, the SOS button on the watch is the most reliable way to call for help. A smartwatch is an extra that you do not have to buy, and the watch app works only on Garmin watches, model fēnix 8 and fēnix 8 Solar. The SOS button is a button in the watch app that you can press when you need help, even if you did not fall. It works only when the watch is connected to the phone.

When you sit down heavily

When you sit down heavily on a chair, the phone may think you fell. To the phone this looks like a fall, because there is an impact, its angle changes, and then you sit without moving. If the phone plays a warning sound and shows a yellow screen, as explained in the next section, tap "I'm OK" within 30 seconds, and nothing is sent to your contacts.

The warning sound, the voice and the countdown

When the phone detects a fall, it plays a warning sound, vibrates and shows a yellow screen. At the top of the screen it says "Fall detected", and under the heading a large number counts down 30 seconds. This time is called the countdown. In this profile you have 30 seconds to cancel, twice as long as in the other two profiles, where you have 15 seconds. If nothing happened to you, tap the green button "I'm OK", and nothing is sent to your contacts. You can also tap "I'm OK" in the small notification that the app shows at the top of the screen. If you have a smartwatch and it is connected to the phone, it also vibrates and shows the countdown, and you can also press "I'm OK" on it. Moving the phone does not stop the countdown. Only tapping "I'm OK" stops it.

The warning sound in this profile is a chime of three rising tones, like a bell, which repeats every 6 seconds. The chime is pleasant to the ear, but it is not quiet. The sound starts quietly and gets louder gradually, and after 6 seconds it reaches full volume. While the sound plays, the app turns the phone's alarm clock volume all the way up, and after the sound ends it sets it back to what it was.

Between the chimes a voice says: "Are you OK? Press the button to cancel." The button the voice means is "I'm OK". The voice is heard for the first time after the first chime, and then every 6 seconds, until the countdown ends. In the first countdown after you turned on the app, or after the phone switched off and on, the voice may start 6 seconds later, because the phone is still preparing it. If the app is set to English, the voice speaks English.

The voice is heard only if the phone has a read-aloud program installed in the app's language, that is, a program that turns text into speech. In the phone's settings, under "Accessibility", this setting is usually called "Text-to-speech output". On some phones its name is a little different. If the phone has no such read-aloud program, only the chime is heard, and the countdown and everything else work exactly as usual.

To check that the voice works, tap "Test the alarm" on the app's main screen. Despite the button's name, it does not set off an alarm for your contacts. The phone plays the chime and the voice for 15 seconds, and nothing is sent. The test works only when the app is turned on.

From the moment of the impact until an alert is sent, about 53 seconds pass. For 22.5 seconds the phone checks whether you fell, and then there are another 30 seconds of countdown.

From the moment the countdown starts, the phone sends your location to the server every 5 seconds. The server is the system's computer. That way, if an alert is sent, your contacts will be able to see where you are on the live map. The live map is a page that opens in any browser, from a link that the contacts get, and shows on a map where your phone is.

When you tap "I'm OK", the phone sends the server a report that you are OK, and your contacts get nothing. The app also notices when you got out of the car and did not come back to it within 90 minutes, as explained further down this page. If you got out of the car, tapping "I'm OK" also resets the time until that alert. From the moment you tap, you have 1 hour until the alert, even if you had more than an hour left before you tapped.

What happens if you did not tap "I'm OK"

If 30 seconds have passed and you did not tap "I'm OK", your phone does 3 things at once:

• It sends a text message to all your contacts. The text message says that your phone detected a fall and that no confirmation was received that everything is OK. If the phone's location is known, the text message also has a link to its last location in Google Maps.
• It calls your contacts. First it calls the contact you chose in the app to get the first call, or, if you did not choose one, the first contact on the list. It calls them 3 times, one call every minute, even if they answered, and then moves on to the next contact after them on the list, and so on. After the last one on the list it goes back to the first, and keeps calling until someone stops the alert. On your phone the call switches to speakerphone.
• It reports to the server. The server immediately sends the alert to the contacts connected to Telegram. In the contacts' app, the alarm passes between them according to the alert chain. First it rings for the first contact on the list. If they do not tap "Got it, I'm handling it", it rings for the second contact too, and then for all the others. If still nobody has tapped, the alert chain goes back to the first contact and keeps going round, until someone taps that button or cancels the alert. A contact taps "Got it, I'm handling it" when they take on handling the situation themselves.

Your contacts do not know which profile you chose. After a fall, they get the same alert in every profile.

If you are OK after the alert has already been sent, tap "I'm OK, give me another hour" on the app's main screen. This button stops the calls from your phone, and if you got out of the car, it also gives you another hour. If no contact has tapped "Got it, I'm handling it" yet, the button also cancels the alert. Then the contacts connected to Telegram, and anyone who has already seen the alert in the app, get a message that the alert was cancelled. Anyone who gets only text messages and calls does not get this message, so it is a good idea to call them. If someone has already tapped "Got it, I'm handling it", call the person handling it yourself.

After a ride in a car, a bus or a taxi

To know whether you are riding in a vehicle, the app looks only at the speed, based on the phone's location. It does not know whether you are in a car, a bus or a taxi. When the phone moves at 25 km/h or more for two location readings in a row, it thinks you are on a ride. During a ride, the phone does not detect falls. It understands that the ride is over only after 4 minutes in a row in which the speed is below 6 km/h.

Please note: after every ride the phone thinks you got out of the car, and starts counting 90 minutes. 85 minutes after you got out of the car it plays a loud warning sound for 15 seconds, as in the 'Hiking and outdoors' profile, and not the soft chime. If you do not tap "I'm OK", your contacts will get an alert after 90 minutes.

There are 3 ways to prevent this when you come home. You can put the phone on charge, because the phone takes this as a sign that you are resting. You can also answer a question from the phone. When the phone connects to a Wi-Fi network, for example at home, it shows a blue screen and asks "Are you back?". It asks only until 5 minutes before the 90 minutes end, and only when you are not on a ride. When you tap "I'm back, cancel the countdown", the 90 minutes are cancelled. On this button, "the countdown" means the 90 minutes from getting out of the car, and not the countdown on the yellow screen. And anyone who does not go on hikes alone can turn on Travel mode in the app. Travel mode is a setting in which the phone does not count 90 minutes from getting out of the car, and your contacts do not get an alert if you do not come back to it. In Travel mode the phone keeps detecting falls. Travel mode does not turn off on its own.

What the profile does not change

The alert for not coming back to the car works the same way in all profiles, and the alert chain is also the same in all profiles. The SOS button on the smartwatch works the same way in all profiles, as long as the watch is connected to the phone.

How to choose the profile

On the app's main screen there is a line that says "Profile:" followed by the name of the profile you chose. Tap it, and a window opens that says "Who does the phone protect?". Choose 'Older adults', and the profile is saved immediately. Within 3 seconds the phone already detects falls according to the new profile. A countdown that has already started continues according to the previous profile.

In the same place there is also a line that says "What starts an alert and what happens next". It opens an explanation in the app about the profile you chose.