Last Updated: October 03, 2023, 17:29 IST
Google introduced the feature in India last week but it didn’t work on Tuesday
The new earthquake alert system from Google works on Android phones in India notifying them whenever there are tremors.
A major earthquake on Tuesday was the perfect way to test the new Android earthquake alert system in India this week. The incident was reported in Nepal at around 2:51 PM IST and ideally the alert should have beeped but nobody got any notification on their Android phone. So why didn’t Google alert users about the earthquake today?
That’s because the alert system is not supported in India as of now, even though Google officially shared the update about its availability in the country last week.
You can access the earthquake alert in the Emergency settings of your Android smartphone, which is available on most of the recent Android phones. You will notice that the Earthquake alerts feature is enabled by default but a small note below explains the feature’s inability to notify you about the earthquake. As you can see here, the settings of the app says the alerts aren’t available and not supported in this region, which is India in this case.
Google even explains how the feature works but it does come with a host of riders, which includes not being able to detect all the earthquakes, errors in the estimates for the magnitude of the earthquake and shaking intensity. This Android Earthquake Alerts System was announced in collaboration with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) under the Ministry of Earth Sciences.
So, when Google announced the earthquake alert in India, why did it not alert the users? The simple answer is that the feature rollout seems to be taking place in a gradual manner which might take weeks before being operational in the country.
The earthquake on Tuesday was a bit too early for Google’s liking to show what its earthquake alert can offer for Android phone users.
Having said that, many people were able to see the alert on the web, which doesn’t inspire much confidence as nobody is going to search for the earthquake before it actually happens. The company even has a demo version of how this alert will show on your smartphone screen but it seems the implementation is still not fully done. Maybe next time Google will have the systems in place to alert the people.
