India To Release COVID-19 Contact-Tracing App For Feature Phones

Harin - Apr 29, 2020

After the Aarogya Setu app, the Indian government is reportedly working on a new contact-tracing application for feature phones to combat COVID-19.

After introducing the Aarogya Setu app for iOS and Android, the Indian government is reportedly working on a new contact-tracing application for feature phones to combat COVID-19. According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, IT Minister, the app is currently being developed and will be released very soon.

At this point, there is no information available on this app. However, experts have already raised a question about the feasibility of this solution considering these devices’ inherent technological constraints.

The first thing to be taken into account is that different feature phones have different operating systems. Moreover, these systems are often mutually incompatible, making it impossible to develop a universal app.

The second problem is that most of these feature phones don’t support internet connectivity, GPS, or Bluetooth. This means in terms of tracking purposes, these devices will be useless.

India Feature Phones — The second problem is that most of these feature phones don’t support internet connectivity, GPS, or Bluetooth.

For people living in India, even when the market is flooded with affordable smartphones from Chinese as well as Indian smartphone-makers, feature phones are still the main mode of communication. According to IDC data, while the country has about 450 smartphone users, the number of feature phone users is relatively higher, at 550 million. This is the reason why the government is trying to come up with a contact tracing solution dedicated to feature phones.

In many other Asian, African, and South American developing countries, feature phones are also quite common. If the Indian government successfully develops a tracing app for feature phones, it will be beneficial for other developing countries as well.

Feature Phone Tracing App — The app will be beneficial for other developing countries as well.

However, The Register points out that, unlike other contact tracing apps such as the one from WHO, Arogya Setu isn’t open source. So we will have to wait and see if the Indian government has any plans on sharing the source code of the app for feature phones with other health agencies and governments.