In a shock reveal today, officials briefed the media on how the Isle of Wight Covid-19 Contact Tracing App performed.
Only 4% of iPhones were detectable, meaning 96% of those running the App on Apple handsets weren’t even recognised by handsets they were passing near to.
Not detecting
This was put down to “the way the Apple Bluetooth Stack works”. We were told today the phone puts the App into background and then it won’t detect anything.
Experts warned the Government as early as May that they had found that the App running on iPhones didn’t work well as the Bluetooth in effect went to sleep. This wasn’t ever officially recognised until now.
‘It’s OK, we’ve got the App!’
Islanders were told not to treat the App as any kind of protection. Not all heeded this – Remember News OnTheWight mentioned in our Guardian article, the ‘It’s OK, we’ve got the App!’ comment from someone in the supermarket who wasn’t Social distancing. For those Islanders who had iPhones, today’s information writes this large.
Android: 75%
The figure was drastically different for Android handsets, which saw 75% of their mobiles detected, meaning a quarter weren’t recognised.
New App: Unclear what or when
If the new App is to have tracking functions – the officials would not be tied down to when exactly the new version of the App will appear, or indeed, what functions it will perform – they will be using the Apple/Google API which it was stated will detect 99% of handsets.
Image: Luis Villasmil Image: Visit Isle of Wight under CC BY 2.0
