Lot of emotion in this thread. a) The dialer is software. Your calls are not analog. b) As a user, I _should_ have the freedom to choose a different dialer if

Lot of emotion in this thread. a) The dialer is software. Your calls are not analog. b) As a user, I _should_ have the freedom to choose a different dialer if I want. (E.g. I am on a data-only plan, and I want to use VOIP.) c) Say I'm on wifi with no tower reception (as used to be the case when I lived in Virginia, within 50 miles of DC). 911 calling over wifi works on some carriers but (I believe) not others. It's therefore fine for third party dialers to be able to handle 911 - VOIP might be by far the more reliable alternative for a particular user's circumstances. d) MS Teams registered itself to handle calls, regardless of whether or not the user was logged in, and some bug in that area caused it to lock up after the call was made. They're likely fixing this specific aspect - if you're not logged in, it will pass-through calls to the next app that's registered as a dialer. Straight up bug. e) There should be (and likely is?) a certification process for apps that want to act as the dialer. Is Google liable for distributing an app that registers as a dialer that has a bug when it comes to 911 handling? Maybe. It's a slippery slope to make the distributor liable for third party developers' bugs. f) The user stated that the emergency call was going on in the background while the UI was locked up. To the Android OS, the app was handling the call. It's pretty obvious that it'd be hard to detect. Should Android have detected the high CPU, terminated the Teams app's process, and then fallen back to the native phone dialer? Clearly not, because the call might actually have been in progress, and the operator might have been taking information from the user. Seems to me that the best Android could do is to add more functionality to the special 911 dialing UI. Specifically, it should probably prompt the user to choose which dialer to use, and within N seconds of no response automatically choose the native dialer (IF there is a tower signal, or it can route the call over wifi). If an alternate dialer is used, it should maintain an overlay on the screen allowing the user to switch to native dialer with one click, terminating the alternate app. That all said, longer term 911 itself probably needs to enter the 21st century. While it will take some time, voice calls probably won't be around with the same infrastructure in 50 or 100 years. Why shouldn't there be 911 over whatsapp, SMS, hangouts, meet, whatever else? Why shouldn't there be a 911 app that comes preloaded? Imagine being able to send video or photos to the 911 operator. Clearly there's a high bar for reliability, but bear in mind that cellular providers themselves are not offering consistent coverage across the US / world, and that land lines are going the way of the dinosaur.