Google adds earthquake warning tools to Android phones; here's how it works

Google on August 11 added earthquake warning tools to Android smartphones in a bid to provide data that could alert users of a tremor nearby. While feature, as of yet, has only been rolled out in California, search engine reportedly informed that it will be introduced in Indonesia and or developing countries as well. 

search engine, in its blog post, said that it will initially start working with United States Geological Survey to send earthquake alerts to Android devices. While feature, for w, is just available in California, Google informed that Android devices will send alerts to phones from ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system. company added that Android phones can be turned into ‘mini seismometers’ to detect when earthquakes occur and to send advanced signals to alerting system. 

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Google said, “With growing cost of natural disasters worldwide, we saw an opportunity to use Android to provide people with timely, helpful earthquake information when y search, as well as a few seconds warning to get mselves and ir loved ones to safety if needed”. 

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Android phone-based earthquake detection 

company explained that all Android smartphones come tiny accelerometers that can sense earthquakes. company added that phones are even sensitive eugh to detect P-wave, which is first wave that comes out of an earthquake and is typically much less damaging than S-wave, which comes afterwards. Google said that if phone detects something that it may think is an earthquake, n it will send a signal to ‘Google’s earthquake detection server’, along with location of where shaking occurred. 

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search engine explained, “ server n combines information from many phones to figure out if an earthquake is happening. We’re essentially racing speed of light (which is roughly speed at which signals from a phone travel) against speed of an earthquake. And lucky for us, speed of light is much faster!”

y furr added, “Over coming year, you can expect to see earthquake alerts coming to more states and countries using Android’s phone-based earthquake detection”. 

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