Failed call to 112 on Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 phone

I use the (already quite old) Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 phone and want to talk about why this phone (and perhaps some others) can lead to tragic consequences.



About a month ago, I needed to call 112, but instead of the operator answering, I heard that the number was dialed incorrectly (in my country of residence, 112 is the number for emergency calls). Since the phone uses 2 SIM cards, I immediately tried the second one and got through. But what if there was no second SIM card? These situations can be fatal.



For those who do not want to read the history of troubleshooting, you can immediately read the recommendations in the last paragraph.



Actually, the process of finding the reason itself was as follows: a call was made to 112 from the wife's phone (with the same operator that did not call me, but with a different SIM card), the call went through, then the problem is either in my connection or in my phone. Further, a call was made from the same (problematic) SIM card, but on a different phone and the call passed. In total, we have: a call to 112 does not pass from the problem phone using a certain operator, while you can call 112 from another operator from the problem phone. Thus, we find out: the combination of operator + phone gives a failure to call to 112.



Since the phone has not been receiving updates for more than six months, and in general, these specific Chinese generally ignore user messages (tried to report bugs to them, received a complete ignore), it was decided to create a ticket to the telecom operator (in addition, there is a relationship with him on paper, unlike Xiaomi, with whom I have no contractual relationship).



On the first ticket, I was simply told that I did not make any calls and the problem was in the phone, they immediately closed the ticket. Knowing the inner workings of telecom operators and the presence of "fines" for repeated calls, I immediately opened a second ticket, in which I indicated that I would contact the state regulator if my problem was not addressed. A few days later, real engineers contacted me (it was clear from their questions and manner of communication), asked to make a couple of calls, and then I managed to talk to them about the essence of the problem. And the essence of it is this: the phone really did send a call to 112, but at the same time did not indicate the category of "emergency", which is why the call was not transferred to a single service 112, the same engineer was told that everything was working for another operator and he confirmed my guessthat the other operator most likely does not check the category of the call and sends all calls to 112 to a single help desk. The engineers of the problematic operator fixed the problem in my region (i.e. now this operator does not have a strict check of the category of calls for emergency calls) and promised to fix it in all other regions of presence.



And now what this article was written for. When buying a new phone or changing an operator, check that you can reach 112/911 / another number depending on the country. When your phone registers in a non-native network (roaming), it is also very advisable to check whether it is possible to call the emergency service because on crooked phones that do not send the "emergency" number category, the problem may not occur in your native network and may occur in another (it depends on the network settings).



PS The phone was imported into the country by an official distributor, the region is set correctly, the latest stable firmware from the manufacturer. No experiments have been done with the firmware.



PPSI found three complaints from other users with the same problem with this phone model (with a probability close to 100% I can say that at least one complaint is from another country, since it is described on the Ukrainian section of the Xiaomi forum, i.e. most likely a subscriber from Ukraine). Here they are: one , two and three .