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Google Announces Android Device Manager For Later This Month
An anonymous reader writes "Google today announced Android Device Manager, a new app coming later this month that helps you find your lost phone or tablet. The service will be available for devices running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or above. Details are scarce right now, but Google does say Android Device Manager will let you ring your phone at maximum volume so you can find it, even if it's been silenced. We also know you'll need to be signed into your Google Account to use the service."
Seems to fill the purpose of lot of other apps like Android lost, etc... What I would really like to see is a nice way to migrate from an old phone to a new one.
Finnally! Google copies Find My iPhone.
I hope they require some hard proof of identity to use this service (more than just "signed into your Google Account"). It allows you to:
Not a tool I'd want falling into the wrong hands.
Or to put it another way, fragmentation is an especially big problem for developers. Users just have to put up with an inferior platform. Developers have huge amount of hassle.
e.g. BBC iPlayer requires 3 times as many developers of the Android version of the app as the iPhone requires. And that for an experience that is still significantly worse.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/posts/Video-on-Android-Devices-Update
...I really need this.
Every phone maker has copied Apple, including Microsoft and Blackberry. Bitch more.
I want remote brick, if I lose my phone, I want it being completely useless to the next person, no firmware flash, no nothing; a paper weight. I don't want it being sold off for a tenner and sent to another country that doesn't subscribe to the block list.... Actually, you know what? I want it catch fire, I want it to be an incinerated paper weight!
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
Just sayin'
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
How can I sign into my Google account if I'm out and about and lose my phone when the Google two-factor authentication SMS message that would let me sign in on someone else's phone or computer is going to be sent to my phone.
Exactly.
But Lookout has ballooned in size over the years, 9Meg!!, and is not particularly stealthy. (Crooks will find it easily).
There are dozens of these apps on the Play market, and virtually all of them take less room than Lookout. (often less than 1/10 the space).
Then there is Plan B. (also in the app store at above link), for when you forget to install any of these ahead of time.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Another forced G+ plot to me.
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so it has 3 developers?
if they need 6 developers for the android version they're doing something wrong or are counting graphics guys twice or thrice or some shit like that or are counting test folks who test it once a month for release as devs.
it's also possible they're just getting fleeced.
if they need 9 developers they're really getting fleeced and if they need 12 developers I got a bridge to sell to bbc.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I was hoping for an actual management system. So you can you know, 'manage' your portable devices from a central point.
Being able to make them scream when they are lost.. .*yawn*
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So what you're saying is the BBC employed poor developers and augmented them with more poor developers? Maybe they've got a poor person running the project.
Anyone who thinks fragmentation is a problem for Android is not an Android developer, or simply has no idea of the many tools that Google has to offer those who actually NEED to target the latest platform, such as embedded APIs to make apps forward compatible with features that don't exist on a specific version of Android.
Really I have yet to see any reason why anyone would specifically target Android vs 4.0 and above unless they use [insert obscure feature for specific phone here], in which case they're not targeting the mass market anyway. If anything developing iOS is more difficult because there's no unified way of handling great variance (thinking back to those apps which took up 1/4 of the iPad screen because they weren't iPad compatible)
I've been needing this for clients and their employees for far too long!
Owner of AV Computer Doctor, Mother of Ventura computer repair. http://ventura-computer-repair.com/
...because avast! has been offering this for a while now. Plus, I'm not sure I want allow more Google access into my life.
It's called Google Device Policy, but it's only been available for Google Apps for Business users
;-)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.enterprise.dmagent&hl=en
It's great to have a general user option soon, but for those of you with business needs, the option is already there
Do any of the alternatives that people know of work on a wifi-only tablet?
"Find My iPhone" is really useful for tracking down the children's iPods if they're just lost in the house (or garden).
Sometimes a tablet goes missing and it would be helpful to be able to make it ping in a similar way.
Then there is Plan B. (also in the app store at above link), for when you forget to install any of these ahead of time.
it only works on android 2 devices. says so right in the description.
With a hotmail account and my AU$160 Nokia Lumia 520 you get all the same features. Ring, Lock, Erase and you get to see it on a map too. Pretty cool for a budget smartphone.
Considering this is an optional app that you have to download (rather than being baked into an Android release), what does it offer that loads of similar free apps on the Google Play store have offered for years now (OK, apart from the fact that it's an app from Google of course)?
I'd have been more impressed if this had come with the Android 4.3 release to be honest and might actually be one of the very few pre-installed Android apps that could be justify being uninstallable.
It's hardly the first example we've had on Slashdot. Open your eyes. Or maybe you're just a Fandroid, and so ignore them.
So what you're saying is the BBC employed poor developers and augmented them with more poor developers?
No that's the excuse you're trying to make, based on nothing.
The BBCs reason is very specifically the fragmentation of the Android platform. Both OS and devices.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20754182
Anyone who thinks fragmentation is a problem for Android is not an Android developer
The BBC developers do. As do various others that we can confirm have real apps in development. There's no evidence that the claim that there's no fragmentation problem comes from anyone who actually develops. Just fanboys.
And as if by magic, a few minutes later, yet another example appears on the Slashdot Front Page.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/13/08/03/1847227/why-pbs-wont-do-android