The bug was first spotted by the Verge. Saying “charge my phone 100 percent” to Siri automatically starts a call to the emergency services. The user has 5 seconds to cancel the call before they are connected to the operators.
No mention of the “feature” has been found in any of Apple’s official documentation for Siri. Users have been left wondering whether the response is intentional or, more probably, just a mistake.
Apple hasn’t yet issued any explanation. Some have suggested that it could be used to call for help during a break-in without raising suspicions from the attackers. Telling Siri to charge your phone may attract less attention than trying to quickly dial in a number. Alternatively, it may make you even more conspicuous.
Readers of the Verge came up with a more plausible reason for the unexpected behaviour. It is now thought that Siri is responding to the word “phone” in the phrase. Saying “charge my phone 911 percent” also calls the emergency services and saying any other three-digit percentage results in a call to the number too.
The issue only seems to occur in iOS 8 but has confirmed to be present in both the US and UK. Presumably the new “proactive” Siri in iOS 9 is intelligent enough to realise that calling the emergency services is not a suitable alternative for charging your iPhone to capacity.
It’s unclear how the discovery was made as Siri clearly can’t actually charge your phone, regardless of what command you say. It’s now best just not to ask though, unless you want to waste police time and resources while Apple establishes what is causing this.
