The 999 phone charging myth is an

urban legend An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...

that claims that if a

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

has low battery then dialling

999 999 or triple nine most often refers to: * 999 (emergency telephone number), a telephone number for the emergency services in several countries * 999 (number), an integer * AD 999, a year * 999 BC, a year Books * ''999'' (anthology) or ''999: T ...

(or any regional

emergency telephone number Most public switched telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number (sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or the emergency services number) that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assista ...

) charges the phone so it has more power. This was confirmed as untrue by several British police forces who publicly cited the dangers of making such calls.

Basis

The basis for the belief was a feature of

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...

phones: if the battery level was too low, the phone automatically locked down phone features and shut down the phone radio for all calls except to emergency services. People discovered that if they dialled 999 then immediately hung up, it would override the shutdown for several minutes so that phone calls could be made. The belief seems to have originated in BlackBerry forums around 2012. A related belief arose in 2015 that telling

Siri Siri ( ) is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple Inc.'s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, tvOS, and audioOS operating systems. It uses voice queries, gesture based control, focus-tracking and a natural-language user interface to answer questio ...

on an iPhone to "Charge my phone to 100%" would cause the phone to call emergency services as a secret safety code. This was later traced to a bug in

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

programming that was fixed within a day. The myth continued to spread on social media as a prank.

Response

In 2013, Derbyshire Constabulary released a press release telling people not to believe the claim that calling 999 charges the battery. They cited that for every silent or aborted 999 call received, the operators have to call the person back to make sure there is no emergency. These silent calls waste police time that could potentially block responses to real emergencies.

Bedfordshire Police Bedfordshire Police is the territorial police force responsible for policing the ceremonial county of Bedfordshire in England, which includes the unitary authorities of Bedford, Central Bedfordshire and Luton. Its headquarters are in Kempston, B ...

also released information asking people not to call 999 except for an emergency as they stated that in the last six months of 2013 they had an increase in hoax 999 calls from people believing the urban legend. Other sources supplemented these press releases by stating that misusing the 999 number is illegal. They also stated that the police could cut off telephones being used to abuse the 999 service.

References

{{Urban legends Emergency services 2012 hoaxes Battery charging BlackBerry Limited Telephone crimes Misconceptions Urban legends