Today, Google released its Android Device Manager. Now, you can locate and ring your phone or tablet remotely.
If you’ve misplaced your device in the house, you can use this service from the web to ring your phone. This function will override any silent or vibrate settings, so you won’t have to worry about not hearing it. Additionally, it will show you exactly where on a map that your device is hiding. You can also elect to enable remote wipes, though this needs to be set up on your phone or tablet first before you can trigger it remotely.
Android Device Manager [via Google]
Comments
15 responses to “Google’s Android Device Manager Finds And Wipes Your Lost Phone”
YES!
I have 2 phones, 1 personal and 1 for work. How do i select which phone to ring?
In the picture above, their is an downward arrow. Clicking that let’s you select for your devices,assuming they are on the same google account. If they aren’t, just log into the other google account.
No Mac Fanboy here, but, I have been thinking about switching to android, not knowing enough about it. This is the kind of thing that I have taken for granted on my iPhone for ages, yet for android it’s a big new feature ? It makes me worry what else I would miss if I did make the switch, despite the S4s impressive specs.
There has been third party apps that do this and a lot more for a long time, this is just the first one from Google.
Did the “Find my iPhone” let you ring the phone from your computer? I’ve not used iPhones before.
Like @rekuhs said, there are 3rd party apps for this, but Google almost always do a better job.
It can since 2010. Find my iPhone lets you locate, password protect, ring, display a message and wipe your iphone remotely. iOS 7 will even let you reversibly ‘brick’ your iphone so that it cannot be used unless you have the password, even if you try to wipe it!
I really don’t think you’d miss much if you made the switch, can’t think of any apps I’ve heard of on iPhone that don’t have Android equivalents. Of course if there are some specific tools you want to be sure will be just as good maybe have a look at what the corresponding apps are before making the switch. I’ve had an S3 for a while now and the only thing I can say about it is that it works bloody well for this guy right here 😛
A lot of this type of stuff has been available on Android as an app by 3rd party developers for ages via the Google Play store. Now its been done by Google which is great for them because they can get your location history as well.
It’s about time!
I have activated the feature yesterday on my nexus 7 3G and it says I do not have any activated device. Is it a phone only feature? Or am I missing something?
This is very nice but I think that this needs better security. For an account that is already logged in, this should be like accessing the account settings, a password prompt should be shown every time you try to open it.
I get this error when going to the page?? are we all on a paid Apps plan?
“Google Apps Device Policy is only available for Google Apps Business and Education customers. Please log in with your Google Apps account to access this page.”
Don’t get all the comments about how Google is finally release this functionality, I’ve been using this interface for well over two years now. My first registered device was in Apr 2011.
This has been a long standing features for Google Apps users.
Unfortunately if someone steals your phone they can use the App to wipe your phone as the app isn’t password protected.