- The Android Earthquake Alert system failed to detect recent tremors in north India, possibly due to its recent launch and gradual rollout to Android 5+ users in the country.
- The system utilizes accelerometers in Android smartphones to function as mini-seismometers, identifying potential earthquakes when multiple phones detect simultaneous shaking.
- Once an earthquake is detected, the system sends advance warnings to nearby Android handsets. The feature was recently made available in local languages in India.
- However, the system has limitations including the inability to detect all earthquakes, and errors in estimating magnitude and shaking intensity.
- Usage of this feature requires Wi-Fi and/or cellular data connectivity, with both Android Earthquake Alerts and location settings enabled.
Also, the earthquake came just days after Google launched its Android Earthquake Alerts in the country.
Seems to me it just wasn’t ready yet, idk
You’d thing a launch would imply something being ready…
Actually, a launch at Google means it’s just about ready to be killed off.
Welcome to 2023!
Welcome to the past decade or so at least
I was curious and did a quick search. It looks like the system was criticized in Turkey as well? Not sure if the sample size is just too small or if it just wasn’t firing for people.
This was the first thing I thought about after seeing this post. It was the majority of people in Turkey reported that they didn’t get it, a lot of the the ones that reported they may have in the surveys weren’t 100% certain either.
It works well in California. Just had one the other morning for a 4.2.
Depending on how far away it is I’ll have a few seconds notice. This one was really close so the alert came in almost at the same time. Last year I had about 10-15 seconds notice for a 6.4.
From the article, your device needs to be charging with location turned on. I don’t think that’s what the majority of the people do. That and probably a small sample size for the alert to be reliably sent to other devices.
Do folks often manually disable their location services?
I do for my own when not in use and have seen others do the same. The worst i have seen is people disable data.
I disable my location / mic / camera when not in use.
I used to years ago, in the era of Galaxy S2 and such when battery life was a luxury.
I can’t think of a time in recent years where I’ve seen anyone doing that TBH. I know certain people who turn off the wifi router during bedtime.
Same here. I used to do it when location permissions weren’t as robust as well. I don’t bother anymore.
I keep mine off except when driving or when I want GPS-tagged photos. Saves me a bit of battery life.
My phone is always with me in my pocket so I don’t feel the need to track its location using “Find My”. And to be honest, no one is going to find stealing a Pixel 6a enticing…
I disable things i don’t use such as location, mobile data, wifi, bluetooth and rotation.
This is weird. How can charging be a requirement? Phones obviously cannot be charging all the time. It won’t work if an earthquake happens when the phone’s not charging
Weird, My Zenfone (NC, US) no longer has the “not supported” message. Is this region now supported? Also, I may turn it on, just in case.
Only the west coast is supported in the US so far. Iirc it’s just CA, OR, and WA, or something like that
Oh.
