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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."
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.
You don't think the NSA wants to take the time to brute force your wifi key do you?
It doesn't, sadly. It just reinstalls all your apps you've purchased. At Google I/O this year they did however unveil a way to devs to store your saved games in a secure section of google drive including features like conflict resolution (merging saves from 2 different devices). It's up to the devs to actually make use of these features however.
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
Doesn't work, not because of Google but because applications developers do not use the platform API to backup and restore the data
Either set up a backup number for sending codes to that is your significant other's or a someone else you trust, or print out backup codes and keep them somewhere safe.
One wonders why Google wanted in this market, when it was so (more than) adequately populated with other apps.
1. because "find my device" is something users expect for free, and the free offerings available are either weak or crippled.
2. because tracking / locating is a sensitive feature, and people trust google more than others
3. because find my phone is something that people don't know they need until they need it, so if it can be one of the pre-installed google apps, all the better
Because I know that Google already knows where my phone is?
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)
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