Earthquake is one of the most terrible incidents that no one wants to face in their life. Warning moments before an earthquake can also be life-saving. Recently, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake was felt near San Jose, California, and several Android smartphone users received an alert moments before the incident.
About 100,000 people were reported to have received a warning message before the earthquake, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Management said.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was also one of those who received a notification before the earthquake. “Signal came in just before, felt like a long one, hope everyone is ok,” the Google CEO tweeted. He even shared a screenshot of the earthquake notification in his post. Besides Sundar Pichai, Google’s Dieter Bohn said in a tweet: “I got the earthquake warning on my Android phone seconds before I felt it.”
According to Android Authority, Dave Burke, Google’s vice president of Android engineering, tweeted a neat visualization showing many Android phones detecting the earthquake before the shock waves.
“Earthquake in the San Fori Bay area today. Yellow/red represents shaking Android phones acting as seismometers. The circles are our putative estimate of the P and S waves. Earthquake alerts are sent instantly to surrounding phones before the waves hit,” he tweeted.
The notifications received by various users regarding the earthquake are due to the My Shake app. The app was developed by the University of California, Berkeley. The MyShake app can be installed on both iPhone and Android and offers an earthquake warning seconds before it happens. However, since Google announced in 2020 that it would use the university’s technology directly in Android devices, more people have taken advantage of it.
Similarly, the northern Philippines reported a magnitude 6.7 earthquake on Tuesday evening, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said.
