iOS 5 adds earthquake warning notifications in Japan
Japan was hit by an earthquake earlier this year, and unfortunately that is not a uncommon thing in the country. The country has the most advanced early warning system in the world to warn people when such disasters strike, but quite literally every second counts when such a warning is issued. That’s why Apple has included a direct tie-in to Japen’s warning system in iOS 5, taking over for existing third party apps and providing direct notifications when the system goes off. This can be a life saver to many people as cell phones are always close. While it does reduce battery life due to always being connected to the warning system, that’s a small price to pay for those affected.
It’s also interesting to see how such an alarm system is tied into a mobile OS, and it makes me wonder if we will see smoke detectors and similar systems be more connected in the future. I live in an apartment building that has a ridiculous amount of false fire alarms, to the point where people no longer care if the fire alarm goes off. The alarm is also not very loud, so it’s hit and miss if you hear it at all – especially when sleeping. Having the system tied into a mobile device would both provide a closer alarm point and could display information about what zone the fire alarm went off in, which would quickly help eliminate false alarms since those normally go off in certain zones.
[9to5mac]
