Finding a misplaced smartphone can often be a losing battle, but with technology being what it is in this Digital Age, there are all manner of tools available out there to help you track it down. Most of these apps offer some sort of alarm, vibration, tracking system, and even security features like screenshotting the faces of those typing failed password entries or remote wipe. Yet while Apple has offered this feature to its customers for a long time now with Find My iPhone, the same cannot be said of Android – until now.
Google has just announced the very similar Android Device Manager, which will let Droidsters hunt down their lost devices using GPS tracking, activate the ringer, and most of the other features you’d generally associate with such a tool.
Android Device Manager certainly has not arrived before time, and considering how efficient Google tends to be when it comes to Android, it’s actually surprising it has taken such a long time to hit the scene. As a long-time iPhone user switching to Android earlier on this year as my daily driver, I was quite shocked not to see a Find My iPhone dupe from Google.
Of course, it’s not as though Android users have been completely bereft. Security firm Lookout’s Android app features all of the bells and whistles of Android Device Manager, and then some. But still, while there’s a third-party app for pretty much everything, it’s nice to see Google come through with its own offering, and while Android Device Manager will hit the Play Store for Android, we wouldn’t discount the possibility of it becoming a native feature in the future.
When it does release on an as-yet unconfirmed date, it will run on any Android device on version 2.2 and up, which covers most of the population using the Google mobile OS. Anybody looking to take advantage of the app’s features will require a Google account also, but then again, you knew that already.
If you want the safety blanket of Android Device Manager’s features but don’t want to wait, I highly recommend you try Lookout’s app in the meantime, which has saved me on more than one occasion.
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