Being warned about an earthquake even a few seconds before it hits could very well be the difference between life and death. Samsung improved upon the earthquake warning feature for phones in One UI 8.0 while Google brought it to Wear OS-powered smartwatches like the Galaxy Watch last year.

It did have a limitation on smartwatches, though, as the warnings could only be displayed when your device was paired with a phone. That limitation is now being removed.

Google is introducing a change with the newest Google Play Services update (v26.07) that will bring earthquake alerts to smartwatches even when they're not paired to a phone. The change log for this update states that, With this feature, you can now get earthquake alerts on your Wear devices even it's unpaired from the phone.

The way the feature works right now is that your smartwatch will basically mirror the earthquake alert that's shown on your phone. Google is making it possible that the alerts arrive independently on the smartwatch regardless of whether it's paired to a phone or not.

This will certainly go a long way in providing more people with advanced warning of earthquakes, but it remains to be seen how this feature will work, as Google hasn't revealed any additional information right now about the way it works, what smartwatches it will support, and whether it will only be limited to the cellular variants.