Does Apple phone not have earthquake warning? Customer service responds to earthquakes | functions | warnings
After the earthquake in Dezhou, Shandong, the presence or absence of earthquake warning function on mobile phones has attracted attention from netizens.
According to the official measurement of the China Earthquake Networks Center, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake occurred in Pingyuan County, Dezhou City, Shandong Province at 2:33:59 BST on August 6, 2023, with a focal depth of 10 kilometers. The epicenter is located near Wangdagua Village, Wangdagua Town, Pingyuan County, Dezhou City. As of 8:00 am on August 6th, a total of 59 aftershocks have occurred.
On August 6th, the topic of # Apple Earthquake Warning # topped the Weibo hot search, and a user pointed out, "Apple is such a big mobile phone company, but earthquake warning is such an important feature that it doesn't have. It's so expensive, shouldn't it be reflected on? Look at domestic Android, all of them have it."
The official Weibo account of People's Daily Online has released various ways to open the earthquake warning function for various phone models. Mainstream domestic phones can enable earthquake warning in the "Settings" section, while Apple and Samsung phones need to search for the "earthquake warning" keyword and download relevant apps on their own.
Why do Apple and Samsung phones not have earthquake warnings in China?
An Apple customer service representative told reporters that after updating to the latest version, the iPhone can activate the "government alert" at the bottom of the "notification" column. By default, it is activated. When the government of the user's country or region issues an alert, the user will hear a special sound similar to an alarm.
But the reporter tested multiple iPhones, and even in the latest version, there is no "government alert" option at the bottom of the "notification" column on the iPhone.
Another Apple customer service representative told a reporter from Pengpai News that after the earthquake, multiple earthquake warning apps in Apple's China app store surpassed Railway 12306 and reached the top three of the free app rankings. The first one among them is the "Earthquake Warning" app of Chengdu High tech Disaster Reduction Research Institute, which is also a partner of several domestic Android phones.
It is worth noting that according to Apple's official website, Apple Japan supports earthquake and tsunami warnings, but Apple emphasizes the need to use telecommunications service providers in Japan that support related businesses. Warning information will be transmitted to mobile phones through SIM. Previously, some Apple users in Türkiye asked in the Apple community why Apple could not provide early warning but Android could.
According to a previous report by The Washington Post, Apple does not support embedding relevant warning information into the system due to iOS security considerations, and US users need to use third-party earthquake warning apps.
In a voting event on social media on August 6th, 3183 people participated in the "Have all your phones activated earthquake warnings? Did you receive them last night?" vote. Among them, 1150 people said that non domestic phones do not have earthquake warnings, and 1014 people said that they did not set them before but are now setting them.
Samsung's mobile phone responded to the report from a domestic phone manufacturer, "Our phone has this function, but it's unclear how to obtain the source address."
According to a reporter from Pengpai News, in June 2021, China's first mobile earthquake monitoring and early warning network was launched, which can extend earthquake early warning capabilities to areas not covered by traditional earthquake early warning networks through the access of millions or even billions of mobile phones, achieving "earthquake early warning capabilities wherever there are people" and saving more lives.
At that time, Wang Tun, Director of the Chengdu Center for Earthquake Early Warning Technology of the China Earthquake Administration, Director of the Sichuan Provincial Key Laboratory for Earthquake Early Warning, and Director of the Chengdu High tech Disaster Reduction Research Institute, introduced that the basic principle of mobile earthquake monitoring and early warning networks is the same as traditional earthquake monitoring and early warning networks. "Unlike traditional earthquake warning networks, mobile earthquake monitoring and early warning networks only replace traditional earthquake warning monitoring devices with built-in sensors and mobile phones."
According to the data disclosed in 2021, at that time, all four major domestic mobile phone manufacturers had built-in earthquake warning functions into their mobile operating systems, enabling approximately 600 million mobile phones in China to have built-in earthquake warning functions.
