Your smartphone can now detect earthquakes and help you survive

(Bloomberg) -- A new app developed by U.S. scientists can turn your smartphone into an earthquake sensor and potentially save lives. Researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Deutsche Telekom AG have built an app that uses a smartphone’s motion sensor to feel earthquakes. The app, called MyShake, records the time and amplitude of a tremor and sends its data and the phone’s location to Berkeley’s seismological lab for analysis.