Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) today announced Android Device Manager, a new website and an app coming later this month to help you find your lost Android phone or tablet. The service will be available for devices running on Android 2.2 or above.
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) says that this would be very helpful if you forget your phone in between couch cushions or forgot it in a restaurant. Android Device Manager will let you quickly ring your phone at maximum volume so that you can find the lost phone, even when it is in silent mode. And just in case the phone is out of earshot, you can locate it on a map in real time. Here’s how it will look like:
Android Device Manager comes with a ‘wipe device’ option
As a last resort, even if the real time map doesn’t help you, then you can keep your data from ending up in wrong hands by quickly and securely erasing all the data via the option provided in the web interface. The “wipe device” option should do just that. As you can see in the screenshot above, you can also see “last located” and “last used” details from the map.
Better late than never for Google
This new offering by Google is essentially an answer to Apple’s Find my iPhone service and Microsoft’s Find my Windows phone. It’s surprising that it took Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) so long to release such an important update. Such a security update should have come earlier but well, as they say, better late than never.
However, this feature is not something entirely new as some third-party apps allows you to do exactly this. But still, it’s nice to see Google come through with its own offering. In the future, this service might become native.
To use this service, you’ll need to be signed in to your Google account. Since it runs on with Android 2.2 and up, one shouldn’t be facing any compatibility issues. We’ll let you know when this app/service arrives and how it works.
