Android Earthquake Alerts: A global system for early warning

Real‑world impact and user experiences

• Multiple commenters in seismically active regions (Europe, Central America, Asia) report receiving alerts 10–60 seconds before noticeable shaking, sometimes at night, describing it as “spooky but impressive.”
• Even a few seconds’ warning helped people run outside or at least mentally prepare; others say 2–3 seconds feels too short to be practically useful, but still better than nothing.
• Some users only learned the feature existed because they checked their phones during or right after a quake and saw the alert already logged.

Trust in Google vs public infrastructure

• Strong tension: appreciation that Google is often the only functioning alert provider in poorer or less-prepared countries vs deep distrust of a company known for killing products.
• Some argue “10 years of a free system is better than none”; others warn that a free big-tech solution can disincentivize local governments or private firms from building sustainable, public systems.
• Several commenters believe essential alert infrastructure should be public, not dependent on a single private actor’s incentives.

Effect on competition and state capacity

• Concern that large “free” systems can wipe out nascent industries (compared to Android’s effect on other mobile OSes).
• Others counter that governments are often too bureaucratic or underfunded to build and maintain comparable systems.

Technical design and limitations

• Phones act as seismometers only when plugged in, stationary, and with location + data enabled; uses accelerometer sampling (~50 Hz, 3‑axis per linked paper) and aggregates many phones’ signals.
• Early warning relies on detecting faster P-waves before damaging S-waves and on the internet being faster than seismic waves; people near the epicenter may get little or no lead time.
• Some users report alerts arriving during or even after shaking, especially far from epicenters or due to latency.

False positives and robustness

• Notable incident in Israel: a government emergency alert triggered mass phone vibrations, which the system misinterpreted as an earthquake; this led to software changes.
• Other rare false positives came from thunderstorms causing widespread vibration; modeling of acoustic events has since been improved.

Alternative and complementary approaches

• Discussion of third‑party apps (e.g., Earthquake Network) using similar phone‑based principles.
• Social media–based systems (USGS, European efforts) can detect public‑felt quakes with ~tens of seconds delay and ~100 km location accuracy; considered useful for situational awareness, not true early warning.

Privacy, consent, and data use

• Multiple commenters are uneasy about “remote-root physics sensors” on phones and mandatory always-on location for alerts.
• Worry that life‑saving features are used to normalize constant location tracking, and that governments can compel access to this data.
• Some want the feature as an optional, separate app or with per-feature location permissions rather than global location enablement.

Coverage, platforms, and configuration

• Service isn't available everywhere (e.g., Canada, Vietnam, parts of high-risk regions like Japan/Indonesia per the map), sometimes reportedly due to overlapping national systems.
• Users ask about iOS support; references to other apps and government Wireless Emergency Alerts, but no Android-equivalent built into iOS is confirmed in the thread.
• On Android, alerts are typically enabled by default in supported countries and can be checked in system safety/emergency settings.