My cell phone is a huge part of my life. It is not only for personal use but I rely on it a lot for my business. If I were to loose my phone or if it was stolen I’d be pretty screwed like I talked about in this article I wrote earlier this year: It Is Not Just A Phone Any More.
In August of 2013 Google rolled out it’s device manger (similar to Apple’s Find My Phone feature). You can go here: https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager to set it up. Just sign in with your gmail account that is connected to your phone. Follow the instructions to setup your devices and then magic! you can find the location of your phone.
While the device manager is pretty basic it does have some great features:
- Locate your phone.
- Ring your phone at high volume even if it is on mute or vibrate.
- Lock your phone.
- Erase your phone.
For most people these features will work perfect and will be pretty much all you need. If you want other features you can always search the Google Play Store for other apps. But hey, this is a free service Google now provides and it will pretty much work on any Android device without installing another app. I have both my cell phone and wifi connected tablet hooked into the device manager.
The only catch is you have to setup device manager before your phone leaves you by ways of being lost or stolen. Take a moment and do that (same goes for you Apple people, setup Find My Phone) before it is too late.