As Android 13 rolls out to more phones, the update brings the once Pixel-exclusive Personal Safety app to more devices, including Sony Xperia and Vivo.
On today’s Pixel phones, the Personal Safety app includes a full suite of features designed to make sure you’re ready when disaster strikes. You can add/edit critical medical information, assign emergency contacts, receive alerts for nearby crises, and even call for help when a car accident is detected on some devices.
While this was originally built as an exclusive set of features for Pixel phones, with the release of Android 13, Google decided to make Personal Safety available as an option for other phone manufacturers. As noted by Mishal Rahman on Twitter, there’s already a small selection of phones getting access to Personal Safety as part of Android 13.
While Samsung certainly has the broadest profile of devices on Android 13 today, there are currently no Galaxy phones signed up for Google’s security suite. Instead, the current list of non-Pixel Android personal security devices includes phones from Sony Xperia, Vivo, iQOO, and Nothing.
- Nothing Phone (1)
- Sony Xperia 5 IV
- Sony Xperia 1 IV
- iQOO 7
- iQOO 8 Pro
- iQOO 9SE
- iQOO 9 Pro
- iQOO 9T
- iQOO I2202
- iQOO 11
- iQOO Neo7
- Vivo X80 Pro
- Vivo X90
- Vivo X90 Pro
The actual experience of using Personal Safety on these phones is simple and very similar to the older (before Android 13) app experience on Pixels. Instead of appearing as a dedicated app in the drawer, you can navigate to Personal Safety from the Settings app, in the “Safety & Emergency” section.
From there, as expected, you can manage your emergency information and subscribe to alerts. However, all currently supported phones will be affected by the Android 13 update does not bring the car accident detection that personal safety is best known for.
Google has opened up car crash detection to non-Pixel phones, but it requires device makers to implement Android’s “Context Hub.” This feature is designed to allow small environmental programs, such as sudden stop detection, in the event of a car accident detection, to run without excessive power consumption. Since adding support for Context Hub requires a system update, it’s not likely that any of these phones will get car crash detection in Personal Safety anytime soon. Despite that, it’s still great to see Google bringing some of the Pixel series’ exclusive features to more Android phones.
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