It has been three years since Android rolled out the earthquake detection system. The system works by notifying people before the earthquake actually hits. Now, based on findings by BBC, it appears that this detection system completely failed during the disastrous Turkey earthquake that took place earlier this year.
Although the earthquake detection feature on Android is good, a report by BBC shows how it failed to save countless lives potentially
For those who don't know, around 60,000 people lost their in Turkey earlier this year in February. However, the report from BBC suggests that Android earthquake detection never worked, and during the first tremor, people did not really get any notifications giving them time to take the necessary precautions.
For those wondering how the Android earthquake detection system works, it basically uses the phone's accelerometer data from various Android smartphones and detects shaking. It sounds rudimentary, but over time, it has proven to be quite accurate in detecting the earthquake's epicenter. Once it successfully detects it, the system sends a warning notification to the user, giving them time to make sure they have the arrangements.
All of this does sound simple and effective, and when it works, it actually is. However, Based on information from BBC, the reporters visited three affected cities and talked to "hundreds" of people, and all of them had the same thing to say - their Android devices never received the alerts. However, the same cannot be said about all of them, as some people got the notifications but only about the second tremor, which took place at noon.
Micha Berman, Google's product lead, has talked about how the Android earthquake detection did work, but the report by BBC talks about how there is no evidence of it actually working or the victims would have talked about it. Berman then countered the argument by saying how the alert “quietly happened in the background, while users were really paying attention to lots of other things.” but the reports from various residents are contradicting, talking about how there were no alerts in the first place.
Google even went as far as supplying a PDF list with 13 social media posts about the earthquake warning. However, only one of the posts actually talks about the warning that occurred before the first earthquake.
Hopefully, such incidents will not happen again, and people will receive their warning notifications on time. This surely is something to worry about and look into. I have never had the misfortune to ever rely on Android's earthquake detection, but I have heard that it does work. It's just an unfortunate event that it failed to work in a situation that could have really benefited from it.
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