Google is tapping billions of Android smartphones to help detect earthquakes and warn people nearby.
The tech giant announced in 2020 that it was building a crowdsourced tremor detector using the accelerometers in Android phones.
Now, a new analysis shows that the system recorded 11,000 quakes about as well as standard seismometers.
Google said its system alerted millions of users across 98 countries, although it isn’t foolproof: The tool underestimated a pair of powerful quakes that hit Turkey in 2023. Still, it could help countries that don’t have a national early warning system, a seismologist told Nature.