Google is improving earthquake alerts on Wear OS watches | Infinium-tech
According to the release notes for the latest version of Google Play Services, Google is now sending earthquake alerts to Wear OS devices even if they’re not connected to a smartphone.
Google first brought Android’s earthquake alert system to Wear OS last year, but until now it was basically mirroring alerts received on your phone.
From now on, even if your phone is too far away to stay connected to your watch, the watch will still notify you about earthquakes. Of course, doing this will likely require a standalone internet connection – thus, this probably only applies to watches that have mobile data connectivity built-in.
Earthquake warning systems use sensor data collected from millions of phones to detect earthquakes. Basically, when your phone’s accelerometer detects a vibration that could indicate an earthquake, it sends that data to Google’s servers along with the general location. When they receive a large number of such communications from locations located close to each other, an alert is generated.
It’s not yet clear whether Google also plans to start using sensor data from Wear OS watches for the system.
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