Today, there was the annual nation wide alarm testing day in Germany. On this day, emergency apps are being tested and also, low level Cell Broadcast (“Presidential Alerts”) are part of the test.
Wireless emergency alarms are part of Android since Android 12 (which is what Kompakt is based off). So, I was wondering how the alarm would look on the phone. It worked! For those curious, this is how it looks:
However! Before the test alarm I checked the wireless emergency alarm settings, they are only available in the developer options and they were turned off by default:
Wikipedia says you can’t opt out of the highest priority alerts so I wonder if the alarm would have been shown anyway. But still, I think the alarms should be on by default or at least not being hidden in the developer options!
I just checked again and the alarm options are in fact in Settings → Safety and Emergency → Wireless Emergency.
Still, on my device they were turned off by default.
It’s interesting, because I was in Berlin since last Thursday for IFA 2025, but I have a POLISH number (but I was using German networks for roaming) and returned to Poland yesterday.
What you see here is in fact not the test warning broadcast but one from two days ago when you were still in Germany. There was (and actually is) an incident in Berlin where emergency numbers didn’t work due to a wider power outage in the city.
Did you just receive that today? Or was this saved in your alert history?
@csllr It was saved in the alert history because yesterday I also received an emergency alert about the Russian drones in Poland. I was surprised how differently the alerts work.
In Poland, I got this about the drones…
It made me thing about the different ways networks handle certain communication. Just because I’m used to one way, does not mean it will be the same way on a different network.
it’s not the network, this is a different kind of alert based on SMS. Cell Broadcast works differently by sending alert to all devices in an area, without knowing their numbers. In fact, it even works on phones without SIM cards. This method is more fail proof and is required by law in the EU since a couple of years.
