My new bag has the helpful property of, when I put my phone in the phone part a certain way round, pressing a pattern of keys on my phone such that it unlocks the keypad and dials 999. Fortunately it doesn't then seem to press 'call'.

I don't quite understand why this still happens. I had that nearly happen to me a couple of times in bloody 2000, FFS; why have the mobile industry not figured out a way to stop it happening by now? Either have all phones be the kind with a hard cover that folds over the keypad, or do something clever in software to make it harder to accidentally hit the wrong combination.

For example, my old phone had the property that in keypad-lock mode the only keys you could press were 9, and Call if you'd typed in three nines. So if the keypad was locked and you just mashed all the keys repeatedly in arbitrary order, you'd eventually dial 999. A more sensible approach, perhaps, would have been to arrange that in keypad-lock mode you could type in any number you liked and press Call, but if the number wasn't exactly 999 then it would say "no". Then random button-mashing in a pocket or bag would make it much harder to make a mistake.

Those two both result in accidental 999 calls from people's pockets, but make it easier for people who've just lost both hands in an accident to call an ambulance. My phone had exactly three nines on the screen at least once.

I think the best way to have it do that is for the unlock buttons to be separate from the actual keyboard and sunk into holes in the sides.

See also my regular rant about why bicycle lights don't have some sort of locking mechanism so that they don't turn on when you put one thing on them in your bag and run out their own batteries/allow your bag to do a good impression of the video for "Danger Danger High Voltage".

I'm pretty sure it's a legal requirement that mobile phones should allow people to dial the emergency services (in the UK 112 and 999) without needing to find out how to unlock the keyboard.

But that doesn't rule out the idea that only the specific sequence 9-9-9-call needs to work, whereas sitting on the keypad and generating 4-6-3-4-6-9-3-4-5-9-4-2-3-5-9-2-0-call could usefully say "stop being silly".

Yes, but laws (and the interpretations of laws) rarely take silly into account. Either that or they're just being lazy; I think, however, that they're mostly just covering their arses to avoid a lawsuit from someone trying to dial 999 whilst wearing boxing gloves.

or a timeout? leave the first 9 on the screen for X seconds and then give up and go back to a clear screen

A quick test suggests that mine only reacts to any substring being 9-9-9 (so 9-7-9-9 won't do).

I think unlocking the keyboard is superfluous in that manoeuvre; I've just tested mine and you can dial 999 with keyboard lock on. Because obviously the *over-riding reason* for using keyboard lock isn't to stop small children dialling 999, oh no. Head desk.