Apple Adds Early Earthquake Warning Notifications for Japanese iOS Users

[Phillip Swanson]

Earlier this year Steve Jobs wrote a personal letter of support to those affected by the earthquake in Japan. Apple has extended the support from shelter, supplies, and donations to implementing native support for early earthquake notifications in iOS 5.

Japanese iOS users can turn the early notifications feature on via a slider at the bottom of the Notification Center settings page in iOS 5. The early notification system is directly connected to Japan's earthquake warning system, the most advanced in the world (warns of earthquakes seconds to minutes before impact), and when turned on can be drain on battery life. A small price to pay for one's safety.

Early earthquake notification apps already exist in the App Store, and provide the same service as Apple's newly added notification option. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the other applications when iOS 5 makes its debut later this year. Whatever the case, Japanese iOS users will soon have another way to be alerted in case of another earthquake.

Source: 9to5Mac

[KayeVee]

Not to be a spelling/grammar freak or anything but you might want to change Japanase to Japanese in the title

[delusion950]

i like this. very nice. good job Apple

[RICO_]

Do other earthquake-prone areas of the world have this feature as well...like California?

[BenderRodriguez]

They should add it to EVERY IDevice cause people move around

[z3r01]

thats a great way to get some japan brownie points ! or sushi points for that matter way to go apple!

[GenesisDH]

They should add it to EVERY IDevice cause people move around

I'm pretty sure it's in the iOS itself and shows up as a toggle in the settings when iOS determines the device is being used in Japan by Location Services, region settings and/or the SIM installed on the device.

Do other earthquake-prone areas of the world have this feature as well...like California?

More than likely this can't be implemented outside of Japan without backend support by the various alert system operators (in California, for example, Seismic Warning Systems operates a majority of the urban earthquake alert systems). This would mean they have to send out the alerts to the web in a way that iOS would handle them like a push notification.

The way I understand it from my former roommate living in Japan: This (and the AppStore app mentioned in the OP) uses web-based alerts sent by the JMA, Japan's version of our NWS, and can be ineffective if cellular data or other web connections aren't available (or the network is overloaded/damaged/disabled). 1-seg, TV, and radio is a more effective alert method for this reason.

[Borischan]

I live in Japan and personally I think this function is as useful as tits on a nun.
On the night of 3/11, after the big northeast Japan quake, I installed an app on my spare iphone. Now, that was an unusual day, but the battery ran out in record time!
Also, the time between the quake notification happening, and feeling the quake itself is minimal, depending of course how far away it is.
There was really no benefit whatsoever, I won't use it...