How your Android phone could save you in an emergency

For some Android users, calling for help is about to get upgraded.

Dialing an emergency number the UK and Estonia will now instantly send information about your location if you're calling from an Android device, Google announced yesterday.

With the change, 999 operators (the emergency number in the UK and many other countries) will be able to access information from Android's new Emergency Location Service. ELS makes up for where tracking via GPS and cellphone towers can sometimes suffer: indoors. Google is vague on how it works -- it still uses GPS and cell signals, in addition to location data from apps and Wi-Fi. It can also turn on a phone's location services if a user has them off.

The service will be available on 99 percent of Android devices (those with Android 2.3 and up). It will be supported by major UK carriers, including EE, BT, Three, Vodafone and O2. Neither Apple or Microsoft has commented on whether their users will have access to similar services.

Customarily, an operator will still ask a caller for their location, but a GPS location is sent to them anyway. But wireless devices have long been trickier than landlines -- even with a GPS location, it can be hard to locate a caller inside a building, especially on with many floors or if they're underground. There's technology in development that's intended to address this problem, called Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS), but it's under development but not perfect and not as widely used.

In the U.S., Federal Communications Commission policy is to leave the specific location-tracking technology up to each individual carrier. There are certain standards, like requiring devices to send their location GPS, but as for more precise location information that GPS cannot track (such as indoors, on different floors, in parking garages, etc.), the procedures can vary.

Google hasn't said whether they will be bringing ELS to the U.S., but said they are “actively engaging” to expand the service to other territories as well. They also assured that this service is "solely for the use of emergency service providers," and that it will not be collecting location data from users on a wider scale.