Where's My Phone?!? Google to Roll Out Find My Android Service

We've all misplaced our phones for a period of time. Maybe it only took a few frightened glances next to the couch or a quick look back at the restaurant table to retrieve it. For some of us, however, the loss was permanent, as our little black and grey finger candies were snapped up by the first person who wandered by. And we spent the rest of the day oscillating between fear and anger.

If you've got an iPhone, you've been covered for years now simply by activating Find My iPhone, a service that lets you locate, down to a fairly small circle, where your device is awaiting your rescue (or remote data-wiping if unobtainable). For Android users, however, you've had to rely on third party apps with limited capability to lead you back to your errant device. That is, until now.

The Official Google Blog, Overall listing, has announced that devices running the Android 2.2 Operating System will soon receive a new service, called the Android Device Manager. The upgrade, due out later this month, will include a number of features that will put it on par with Apple's lost phone security system.

If you discover you've lost your phone, you can go to any computer and log into the Android Device Manager, which will be part of the Google Play Store. All that is required is your Google account login, the same one you used to activate your Android phone.

Choose your registered phone and push out a signal to ring at full volume, even if your lost phone was last put on vibrate or silent mode. If this doesn't do the trick, find the phone as a blip a Google Map.

If you discover that your lost Android phone is on the move and you don't feel safe going into full-on vigilante mode (or are worried it will get turned off soon), delete all data on the device using a special built-in wipe mode, to keep your data safe from prying eyes.

If, like many, you've jailbroken and modified your Android phone, the Google blog says they're also introducing an Android Device Manager app, so you should be covered no matter what.

Images courtesy Google, Android, Wikimedia Commons