Story highlights Early warning is a function developers hope to implement in a future version

Right now goal is to get app distributed around the world, test and validate it

Target is to give 40 seconds of warning that tremors are coming

(CNN) What would you do with a 40-second warning that an earthquake is coming? Scientists at the University of California in Berkeley released a smartphone app Friday they hope one day will let people know a tremor is coming and give them time to move to a safer place.

For now, the MyShake app (available for Android phones) will act as a data collector that will use a phone's accelerometer to record shaking. If it determines it has the same characteristics as an earthquake, the app will send the data to the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

Richard Allen, the developer of the app, told CNN that smartphones will never replace seismic networks, but the app could help contribute and potentially speed up quake alert systems.

The goal is to get people all over the world to download the app then validate this version and test it. On release day, the app was downloaded by users on six continents. Most of the users were in the United States.

Allen said simulations suggest they will need 300 users in a 1,000 square kilometer area to get good data from that quake.

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