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Wear OS smartwatches could soon get another life-saving feature (APK teardown)

A new feature could alert you of earthquakes on your smartwatch, even without your phone.

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Published onJanuary 6, 2025

A Google Pixel Watch 3 displays the watch face Monospace.

Kaitlyn Cimino / Android Authority

TL;DR

Wear OS smartwatches may soon get earthquake alerts via a Google Play Services update.
This feature would be handy for cellular smartwatch users who leave their phones behind.
The earthquake alerts system uses crowdsourced data from accelerometers on Android smartphones to sense vibrations.

Android smartphones with pre-installed Google apps ship with an underappreciated safety feature: earthquake alerts. The Android Earthquake Alert System crowdsources earthquake signals by leveraging the small accelerometers within phones that can sense vibrations and speed. This feature has been restricted to Android smartphones, but Wear OS smartwatches could soon also get this life-saving earthquake alert feature.

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An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.

Google Play Services for Wear OS v24.49.33 includes strings suggesting that Google could soon offer earthquake alerts on Wear OS smartwatches.

Code

<string name="ealert_earthquake_info_no_mag">Epicenter estimated about %1$s away.</string>
<string name="ealert_magnitude_info_v2">Initial estimate M%1$.1f about %2$s away.</string>
<string name="ealert_nearby_notification_text_v2">Expect light shaking. %1$s</string>
<string name="ealert_notification_followup_false">Earthquake alert canceled</string>
<string name="ealert_notification_followup_qualified">View official earthquake details</string>
<string name="ealert_notification_nearby">Earthquake nearby</string>
<string name="ealert_notification_occurred_v2">Earthquake at %1$s</string>
<string name="ealert_notification_sender">Google - ShakeAlert®</string>
<string name="ealert_occurred_notification_text_v2">You may have felt shaking. %1$s %2$s</string>
<string name="quake_notification_high_importance_channel_name">Earthquake Early Warning Alert</string>
<string name="quake_notification_low_importance_channel_name">Earthquake Early Warning Updates</string>
<string name="quake_notification_medium_importance_channel_name">Earthquake Early Warning Notification</string>

These strings are related to a flag that marks this as a feature intended for Wear OS:

Code

Ealert__enable_wearable_ux

There is another flag that controls whether earthquake alert notifications should be displayed on supervised accounts, which are usually accounts for kids that their parents or guardians manage:

Code

Ealert__disable_for_supervised

Earthquake alerts on smartwatches would be useful in the case of cellular smartwatches. Users of cellular smartwatches often have use cases where they leave their phones behind. Getting an important alert like this directly on their smartwatch could potentially be life-saving, instantly giving Wear OS smartwatches an edge over top smartwatch competitors.

Earthquake alerts are not currently live for Wear OS smartwatches. We’ll keep you updated if and when the feature goes live.

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