• LG recalls 30,000 handsets because they suck at calling 911

    Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

    Greg Kumparak is the Mobile Editor at Techcrunch. Greg has been writing for the TechCrunch network since May of 2008. Greg was born just outside of San Jose, and now lives in the East Bay of California. → Learn More

    angryphone

    If you’re an owner of one of the 30,000 LG 830 Spyder handsets running OS versions T83LGV03 or T83LGV04, you have two options: A) Get in touch with your wireless carrier for a software upgrade, or B) Don’t get into any situations in which you require 911 assistance.

    Due to legal requirements, all sorts of special work goes into phones for whenever they need to call 911. Generally this all works out to good stuff: emergency calls sans SIM card, GPS detection to help the emergency operators locate you, etc. Unfortunately, special functionality means extra code, which in turn means more room for bugs – and having a bug pop up during a 911 call could be really bad news.

    Such a bug managed to sneak its way into the LG Spyder, which has lead to a recall of the device. If the handset is unable to determine the GPS position during the 911 call, the call will be dropped. Spyder owners are being advised to pop by their carrier for an update – so if you’ve got one, get to upgrading.

    [RCRWireless via phonescoop]

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