Do those find my phone apps really work?

[cmax]

I read conflicting reviews about them being way off with the location and if so which one or ones do you guys recommend. Thanks in advance

 

[terpitude71]

depends on whether you have gps active on your phone; if you do, it will locate within few meters. if not, it relies on a triangulated cell signal, which may or may not be accurate. i like mobile defense; not only has locate features, but also allows you to do a remote wipe of your phone if you arent able to recover it

 

[Emilluminati]

depends on whether you have gps active on your phone; if you do, it will locate within few meters. if not, it relies on a triangulated cell signal, which may or may not be accurate. i like mobile defense; not only has locate features, but also allows you to do a remote wipe of your phone if you arent able to recover it

If I remember correctly (which I usually don't at my age), doesn't it also allow you to remotely activate your gps?

 

[rpfarrah]

Lookout does that and will also make your phone broadcast a screeching tone to help you locate it.

 

[Chillout80s]

Yeah Lookout is a good program. You can enable or disable any of the features on the program, you can also backup the data on your phone to their servers.

 

[cmax]

I have a couple of questions. Are these anti virus programs, do they kill the battery and also can the anti virus be shut down until needed . Thanks.

 

[westie3130]

With lookout, you can disable antivirus. Don't know if it makes much difference in battery.

 

[cmax]

With lookout, you can disable antivirus. Don't know if it makes much difference in battery.

Last question i promise. Is it a real battery hog ?

 

[jdbower]

Personally I object to Lookout's irresponsible behavior in "outing" all these malware apps. Every press release they do seems to imply Android is a hotbed of evil but when you delve deeper it's only because they define evil as any app that's not their own.

 

[GlueFactoryBJJ]

I have Lookout on my BB Storm. Lookout has not identified any viruses or malware on my phone even though it has many apps. Not to say that BB is better, just that I haven't experienced the problems you have. Perhaps your experience is not the norm?

Scott

 

[RRCarter]

I use Lookout on my Incredible, the siren is quite helpful when you lose it in the couch. Remote GPS activation and it tells me it's in my 500 sqft apt so pretty accurate. Haven't seen any significance in loss of battery life since owning it.

 

[vicw926a4]

I just installed Lookout on my DX and PC. Everything seemed OK. I ran a virus scan - no problems, then did a Find my Phone from the PC with GPS enabled. It ran fine, showed the location properly, and sent me an email, but then the screen went dark, and the DX wouldn't respond to my attempts to revive it via the power button for several minutes.

I was going into a mild state of panic, ready to pop the battery, when it suddenly rebooted itself, and came up normally. That gave me quite a scare, and I've never had the DX behave that way for me before. Needless to say, I'm a bit uncomfortable with Lookout right now. Beyond that, I wonder about the wisdom of sending an email which will be received by the phone, which would tip off a thief that it was being monitored. If I decide not to just remove Lookup, I need to investigate if I can substitute another trusted email address that the DX wouldn't receive.

Finally, there doesn't seem to be any provision for turning on GPS remotely. I know that if the DX is running through Wi-Fi, it will give off a location that is about 75 miles away from here, which would make that data worse than useless.