Immuni has a bug, here’s on which smartphones it doesn’t work

The Immuni app to fight the spread of Covid-19 doesn't work on some smartphones: how to check if your device is affected by the bug

A bug causes malfunctions of the Immuni app on some smartphones. The app was launched by the Italian government on June 15 to counter the spread of Covid-19 and is currently used by 5 million users. The bug affects some Android devices, while it doesn't seem to affect iOS ones.

In the first week after its launch, Immuni had been downloaded by more than 2 million users. Then the halting slowdown, with the total number of users who have downloaded the app stopped at 5 million downloads today. This implies that only 9.9% of the population is using the app, and according to some scientists, this percentage is too low to do effective contact tracing of possible positive cases. The bug was discovered by the newspaper La Repubblica and causes malfunctions only in the Android version of Immuni, not on all smartphones.

Why Immuni doesn't work

The bug discovered in the Immuni app consists in blocking the so-called "Exposure Controls".  The app, basically, should autonomously check several times a day if we have come into contact with a likely infected person and, if so, it should send us the notification.

All this is not working on some smartphones, so those who use Immuni and have this bug are basically found out.

App Immuni, how to check if there is the bug

This Immuni bug, apparently, has been going on for a couple of weeks. You can check if our smartphone is among those affected by the bug by going to Settings > Google > COVID-19 > Exposure Checks, and view the number of checks in the last 14 days.

If we see an empty list, then it's likely that Immuni is not working properly on our device.

Immuni, which smartphones are affected by the bug

At the moment, the only certainty is that Apple's iOS smartphones are not affected by the bug, which only affects certain smartphone models and some versions of Android. The Department of Innovation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers has not yet compiled an official and detailed list of smartphones affected by the bug.

From the reports circulating on the net it would seem that some Huawei and Samsung smartphones are particularly affected by this Immuni problem, but maybe it's just because these phones are extremely popular in Italy.

In the meantime, the technicians of the department are working and have announced that an update of Immuni will be released soon to fix the bug and make the app working on all devices.