Dialing 999 Will Charge Your Cell Phone Battery : Hoax

Story:

Dialing 999 Will Charge Your Mobile Phone Battery.

Other Versions

Dialing 999 will instantly recharge your cell phone battery.

Picture Suggesting Dialing 999 Will Charge Your Cell Phone Battery — Dialing 999 Will Charge Your Cell Phone Battery

Analysis:

This weird cell phone charging trick claims that calling 999 from your cell phone and then disconnecting (hanging up) will boost its battery power. It is not a fact!

In the United Kingdom and many other countries, 999 is actually the emergency telephone number that operates similar to 911 in United States. The claim that dialing 999 will charge your mobile phone battery is in fact an urban myth that has been around since at least mid-2012.

Calling 999 will NOT charge your cell phone battery; it will only waste the precious time of the emergency resources. One force from the Anglia region (United Kingdom) has been receiving many such nuisance calls over the past six months, where people believe calling the emergency number and hanging up immediately will boost their battery power. In the past, even Derbyshire Police had to face this trouble. A Bedfordshire Police spokesman explained about this hoax saying that the myth has been circulating from long time and other forces have also suffered these false calls. Calling the emergency number 999 for any other non-police matter puts additional pressure on resources, keeps the operator busy and wastes valuable time that could be spent helping genuine callers, he added. The police spokesman also said that the only way to boost a mobile phone battery is to use a charger.

So calling 999 expecting to get your mobile phone battery charged up will just won’t work; it will only add burden to the emergency service personnel in those areas. If you happen to come across this absurd hoax message, make sure to ignore it and let the sender know that the claims are not true. Misusing the 999 emergency number is a criminal offence and can be potentially dangerous.

You can learn how to make your cell phone battery last longer on wikiHow.