Corona-Warn-App: Samsung and Huawei missed user alerts

Who is using the official German Corona-Warning App and be a Smartphone from Samsung or Huawei that you might have missed in the past few weeks, some of the warning messages. Because, as it now turned out, set the manufacturer of the energy saving options of your smartphone so that the App could not retrieve permanently the list of potentially infected mobile Phone users from your Server. Thus, owners of Android Smartphones from Samsung and Huawei, were in the vicinity of an infected Person, received a warning about it when you opened the App active. In the case of an App, which is primarily run in the Background to keep track of via Bluetooth chains of Infection are likely to have only done a few.

Bastian Benrath

editor in the economy.

A spokesman for the the App supervisor, Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) said the F. A. Z., that the program also works on the affected phones all the time and as planned, the digital detection features all mobile phones have recorded in his circle. Only the synchronization with the Server delay, when active, Open the App, place.

With a new Update of the App (Version 1.1.1) will fixed this Problem now, it was said by the RKI on. Users of Samsung and Huawei Smartphones would have to call after the Update, the settings menu within the Corona-Warning-App and the "- Priority background activity" via a slide switch on the controller. Then, the synchronization with the Server takes place as planned in the Background and all of the alerts appeared in time.

Even before this, it was also possible the phone set accordingly. "The Problem described has long been known and in the FAQ section of the Corona-Warning-App addresses," wrote the RKI-speaker. "There was also explained in detail how the background refresh can be manually activated." The manual activation has, however, made a trip to the settings of the operating system and the compliance of a rather complicated instructions on the website of the App. Why the Update, which makes the setting more accessible, came only now, remains open.

The error is annoying because it should have withheld from a number of mobile phone users over the course of several weeks many alerts of the Corona App: Almost half (48 percent) in the first quarter of the year sold in Germany were Smartphones from Samsung and Huawei. However, he is not an embarrassment for the Federal government, as a major tabloid claimed. Also, the company, SAP and Deutsche Telekom, which have developed the App in order for the error only a little. Blame the phone manufacturer Samsung and Huawei, which had preset the problem of energy saving policies in their operating systems are, if at all. "These special settings will not, however, follow the Google Standards," said a SAP spokesperson for the specialist magazine "Heise".