Questions and answers: What are the problems of the Corona-Warning-App – and what is not

Who is affected by the problems of the Corona-Warning-App?

Bastian Benrath

editor in the economy.

Now both of the major Smartphone operating systems, iOS on Apple phones and Android on almost all the Smartphones from other manufacturers are occurred problems. So, in the meantime, almost all of the users of the Corona-Warning is likely to be App affected. However, none of the problems are so serious that the App would not work. Therefore, you should have the App still on the phone and not delete them.

What exactly does not work?

The Corona-Warning App continuously sends via radio (Bluetooth) with an anonymous identification code for the mobile phone in the environment. Mobile phones, staying a longer period of time is less than two meters away, save this Code and register for the meeting – does the same to the own mobile phone with the Codes of the other. A mobile phone is tested, users a positive effect on Covid-19, it will be saved along with its anonymous identification code to a Server. Mobile phones from other download a list with the Codes of infected cell phone owner from the Server and raise the Alarm, if you have registered in the past 14 days an encounter with one of them. The critical point is the so-called background app refresh; so the function that loads this list is, without that the App needs to be opened – this does not work sometimes. The mechanism of Code-exchanging, however, always works in the Background. Therefore, the App is not affected in their basic function.

How can I be sure that I still receive current warnings?

there is a simple way: You should open the App once a day. Once it is active is called, it loads automatically the current list of potentially Infected down. If after a short wait in the green field of the App under "Updates" then "Today" with a time of day, you are on the safe side, as the App developer of German Telekom and SAP assure. A past date, there is still you should repeat the process a few hours later.

Who is to blame for the problems?

on Android, the Problem is that the phone tries to save battery and therefore the reconciliation of the data in the Background, suppressed. On iPhones, however, the so-called "Scheduler" caused the difficulty, this is a fundamental service of the operating system that manages the execution of tasks. This also caused the misleading error message that the "Region for contact messages had been changed", which has been fixed in the latest Version of iOS 13.6 now. In both cases, however, it is the operating system of Apple or Google (Android) that is causing the problems. Complicating the Situation is the fact that many of the Android-derived operating systems directly from Google, but the Smartphone manufacturers have to be modified. In any case, the fault is not in the case of SAP or Deutsche Telekom. As the developer of the App you are trying to alleviate the problems, but resolved they must be of the operating system manufacturers.