Scanner 911 review

Scanner 911 is an iPhone app that acts as a radio scanner letting you listen in live on various police, fire and ems frequencies around the US. Listening to these stations reminds us of the TV show COPS. It can be fun, and even informative. For example if you hear a siren nearby and wonder what is going on, you might be able to open up your Scanner app and listen in on what is happening nearby.

The available stations include the LAPD, NYPD and hundreds of other live channels all over the US & Canada. Browse by state and you can see the number of stations available per state. As you would expect larger metropolitan states have a ton of stations while the mid states list very few stations. There are also some channels in other countries including Australia, Canada, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden.

You can also find stations close to your location or list the top 50 stations overall. Each station has some icon indicators that tell you how popular it is, whether its live or not. Some stations go offline occasionally. You can add stations to your favorites for quick access. While in play mode you have a simple volume control and a stop/play button to stopping and restarting the live stream. You can record live streams as MP3 files which is a nice feature of the Scanner 911 iPhone app. Finding stations is somewhat easy with the categorized and location based listings. You can also see a list of your recent frequency history. It would be great if we could do a text based search, as well as being able to sort the stations by rating, type, and online/offline state. The graphics are very clean and sharp resembling a digital portable radio. The audio quality is very clean and stable. If you’ve been looking for a police scanner app, this one is definitely worth the money. A great way to experience how hard men and women in these services work to ensure our safety.

Just added new features to the Scanner 911 app include:
– The ability to play the stream in the background so you can use other apps simultaneously. The way this works is the stream is opened in Safari and runs in the background using the media player. To use this feature tap the rounded arrow button while listening to any feed.
– Police codes
– Customize the look choosing from 2 different skins (classic yellow or blue)
– Map feature lets you see where the scanner is on an aerial map within the app
– An updated icon and many more great improvements
– Listen in on stereo channels with headphones or bluetooth.

The states with the lowest number of stations are Alaska and Hawaii with 1 station each. Currently the top 10 states with the most emergency radio frequencies listed on the Scanner 911 iPhone app are:
California: 117
Ohio: 80
Pennsylvania: 84
New York: 76
New Jersey: 66
Illinois: 60
Texas: 60
North Carolina: 60
Georgia: 54
Florida: 52

Here’s a sample list of all available channels in the Scanner 911 app:
– LAPD
– NYPD & NYFD
– Fresno Police
– Ontario Provincial Police
– Waterloo Police
– Edmonton Fire, EMS, STARS
– Miami Police
– Houston Police Department
– Hawaii County Police
– Suffolk County Police
– Baltimore City Police Department
– Las Vegas Police
– San Diego (Police, Fire, EMS)
– Washington D.C. Police
– Oakland Police
– Chicago Area Police & Fire
– Denver Police, Fire and EMS
– Massachusetts State Patrol
– Minneapolis and St Paul Police, Fire and EMS
– Philadelphia Police & Fire
– Pittsburgh Police and Fire

Here is a video demo of the Scanner 911 app on the iPhone

AppSafari review of Scanner 911 was written by Joe Seifi on November 15th, 2009 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Fun, Local, News, Reference. Page viewed 11821 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.