Big update for Android users! Google to convert your smartphones into earthquake sensors

Google is bringing a new update which will convert the Android smartphones into earthquake sensors, allowing them to detect tremors. Japan, Mexico and California already use land-based sensors to generate warnings, aiming to cut injuries and property damage by giving people further away from the epicenter of an earthquake seconds to protect themselves before the shaking starts.

“Earthquakes happen daily around the world, with hundreds of millions of people living in earthquake prone regions.  An early warning can help people prepare for shaking, but the public infrastructure to detect and alert everyone about an earthquake is costly to build and deploy.  We saw an opportunity to use Android to provide people with timely, helpful earthquake information when they search, as well as a few seconds warning to get themselves and their loved ones to safety if needed,” Marc Stogaitis, Principal Software Engineer, Android said.

The tech giant said that installing a ground network of seismometers, as California has done, may not be feasible in all impacted areas around the world. Google plans to use the reach of Android’s platform to help detect earthquakes.  

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“Starting today, your Android phone can be part of the Android Earthquake Alerts System, wherever you live in the world. This means your Android phone can be a mini seismometer, joining millions of other Android phones out there to form the world’s largest earthquake detection network,” it added.

All smartphones come with tiny accelerometers that can sense signals that indicate an earthquake might be happening. If the phone detects something that it thinks may be an earthquake, it sends a signal to our earthquake detection server, along with a coarse location of where the shaking occurred. 

The server then combines information from many phones to figure out if an earthquake is happening. We’re essentially racing the speed of light (which is roughly the speed at which signals from a phone travel) against the speed of an earthquake.