Last week, Google announced the “Android Device Manager“. The best way to think of it is to look at Apple’s “Find my iPhone” service. You can see where your phone is, you can make your phone ring (even if it’s on silent), and you can remotely wipe your device. According to Android Police, the service is now live.
How do you make it work? It’s surprisingly braid dead simple. Visit this website, tell it to send your phone a notification to enable remote wiping, and that’s it. You’re done. How did Google make this so easy? They slipped the code needed to make the Device Manager service work into an update to the Google Play Services application on your phone, which is incredibly smart on their part.
If you were using another company’s product, like Lookout Security or Cerberus, well, now you don’t need to! Granted, those two companies offer far more functionally, such as the ability to turn on your phone’s microphone so you can hear what the person who stole your phone is saying. That in it of itself is pretty awesome.
