I have a Samsung S20+ 5G and last night there was dangerous weather in my area including multiple tornado warnings. My phone never went off with ANY warnings whatsoever! I found out about the tornado warnings after the fact, when people were talking about them on Facebook. I should have been taking shelter, but I had no idea, because the device I rely on to tell me there is an active warning never did.
That got me to thinking. I have Googled and looked at all kinds of information including from Verizon itself, and using that I have confirmed that all of the proper settings were on, and my phone SHOULD receive warnings. Yet the history of emergency alerts shows that the last time I received one was in October 2023 when there was a national test of the system. Prior to that I appear to have received about ONE warning per YEAR, at random, since acquiring this phone during the height of the pandemic.
Yes, I know all the excuses:
"You won't get alerts if you're not in the affected area." I most definitely WAS in the affected area.
"You won't get alerts if you are not connected to a tower in the affected area." It was a pretty big area so any tower I could reasonably have been connected to should have been in it. Unless my phone is choosing to connect to a tower in some other part of the state instead of the ones closest to me, I don't see how this could be the problem.
"You won't get alerts if you are on a call." I wasn't on a call.
"You won't get alerts if your phone has an active data session." What does that even MEAN these days, when most people's smartphones are continually sending and receiving data from the myriad apps and background apps and bloatware that comes pre-installed on them? I doubt there is ever a time for most of us when our phones aren't doing something that uses data, so why in all of Dante's nine Hells would our phones be designed to be unable to receive vital, potentially lifesaving emergency alerts just because some game I haven't played in six months has decided to perform an auto-update in the background? Or even if I am reading my email?
Please, someone make it make sense.
