Essential Android Apps

Status
Not open for further replies.
Just came across this:

http://preyproject.com/blog/2010/01/prey-arrives-on-mobiles-android-version-available

Market-QR1.png


It's a free, open source phone tracker, trying it out now.
 
Prey was recommended to me a few posts back. I've installed it and set it up but not tested it's array of features. If you do test it, let us know how you get on.
 
Prey sounds interesting. I've got Where's My Droid installed on my Desire, but not fiddled with it as of yet.

Is Prey meant to be better?
 
I think there are quite a few apps that can track your phone. I tried out norton security which is a very simple app. You just set up a password and you send an SMS to the phone:
LOCATE <PASSWORD> <YourMobileNumber>
Within 5 minutes you get a text back with coordinates which you can tap into google maps and get the location of your phone. you can also lock or wipe your phone, replacing LOCATE with LOCK or WIPE.

It's only good if the phone is not in the wrong hands and is switched on with your sim card still in it. The app can easily be turned off or uninstalled.

Prey on the other hand cannot be uninstalled simply, you need to enter your password. It also has a wealth of other features when you either activate Prey via SMS or automatically if someone replaces the SIM card with another one. It can display a customised message on screen, sound an alarm for 30 seconds, you will get the telephone number of the SIM that replaced yours texted to a number of your choice and you can also track the phone with that replaced SIM in it. There are more features though. Once you set up an account, you can view them all via the web interface.

I think that's pretty clever!!
 
Last edited:
okay just got a orange san francisco can anyone post me a little list of some of the good free apps and what they do?
 
I can't for the life of me get Prey to work on my Desire. There seems to be conflicting information all over their site, with details on how the application works on different platforms being very jumbled and generally spread all over the place. I don't see any definitive user guide, just a help section...which isn't very helpful!

So you send a text to the phone to turn Prey 'on', which supposedly sets it up to periodically send out reports (none of which I seem to get). Alternatively, there is information on their website which suggests the phone will ONLY send reports upon receiving a text message which brings confusion to the whole idea of Prey having an 'activated' and 'deactivated' mode. And even so, it's still not sending me reports! All I can get it to do is lock the screen and or display a message, which funnily enough DOES trigger automatically. :confused::confused::confused:

Very confused. I think I'll stick with lookout for now. At least that uses push notifications. None of this automatic update nonsense..

What is everyone else using out of interest?
 
looking for a shift workers calender app. from what i can find most dont have a letter for an Early. id Need E,L, LD, N, O. from what i can find its just DNO.


cheers all, also im new to all this...just got my DHD 3 days ago now and ive been reading all this but whats Rooting and why have a custom rom?


sorry for sounding slightly dim.



rotters
 
danza said:
Prey sounds interesting. I've got Where's My Droid installed on my Desire, but not fiddled with it as of yet.

Is Prey meant to be better?
Click to expand...

I'm testing it out right now but I have a feeling WMD is better in that it directly responds back via SMS the Google Maps link to where it is and can shout out using SMS too.

Prey looks like it emails you the reports every xx mins (what you choose) and those emails go to the registered address, now if you're like me you use gmail to manage everything so a thief can see those emails come in and delete them on the phone unless you used another email address to register that isn't managed via Gmail.

I also sent a lock/message/make a noise command from the control panel and they didn't seem to work. From the wording in the control panel it appears if these features are more geared towards a computer or mobile device running a full OS instead of a phone so I guess it works better on laptops and whatnot.

I think Where's My Droid is a less faff experience and faster too, you get immediate responses via SMS instead of every 10mins (minimum). You also only get 10 reports in the free version. I'd be more inclined to sign up to Wavesecure which has a more established track record if I was going to pay for such a service.

martin9887 I use MyBackup Pro which backs up all SMS/MMS threads and restores. I use SMS Backup to back up threads to Gmail's SMS label but it's backup only, not restore. Suitable for archiving SMS/MMS to Gmail though as backups are done locally anyway via MBP.
 
I tried Prey once, didn't really like it, WMD is good and I tried this once too, it can be configured to send a text message periodically. Just send it a 'start' text and it will send back it's lat/long every x minutes.
 
Update!

Prey Reporting is more comprehensive than any others I have tried before, pretty neat!

I notice it emails you report notifications but the report itself has to be viewed from Prey's website - This is good!

Also Uninstalling the app is not possible without entering the app then revoking permissions (password needed).

The Google Maps link seems pretty accurate too, the arrow was just over my room.

Hmmmm.
 
As good as it seems to be, one possible major flaw with Prey that i was thinking of is that if someone does steal your phone, all they will need to do is a factory reset rendering all tracking methods useless. If Prey sets the phone so that its password is needed for a reset, that would be the next useful addition.

Out of interest Khaaan, did you test changing sim card or did you send SMS to the phone to trigger Prey's actions? Or did you try both? :)
 
Last edited:
Hamster said:
As good as it seems to be, one possible major flaw with Prey that i was thinking of is that if someone does steal your phone, all they will need to do is a factory reset rendering all tracking methods useless. If Prey sets the phone so that its password is needed for a reset, that would be the next addition.
Click to expand...

I tested out something like this, in the CPL on Prey's website enable the lock option, then, as soon as the activation SMS comes in to the phone the screen locks and a password must be entered to unlock.

At this point I rebooted the phone to see if it still asks for a password and sure enough it does so nobody can reset the phone unless they enter the password.

Of course this doesn't stop someone entering the bootloader and wiping data that way but I would bet on even cunning thieves knowing how to do this.
 
Khaaan! said:
I tested out something like this, in the CPL on Prey's website enable the lock option, then, as soon as the activation SMS comes in to the phone the screen locks and a password must be entered to unlock.

At this point I rebooted the phone to see if it still asks for a password and sure enough it does so nobody can reset the phone unless they enter the password.

Of course this doesn't stop someone entering the bootloader and wiping data that way but I would bet on even cunning thieves knowing how to do this.
Click to expand...

I understand what you're saying. Security for data is the major concern; the phone should be insured and can easily be replaced. I they've managed to reset the phone before you realise it's missing, your data has pretty much gone anyway, or it's too late. If not, and you've managed to get Prey to do it's stuff, your data is fairly secure to the common thief. Just got to remember not to store personal data on the memory card!!
 
https://www.wavesecure.com/ is a good fully featured lock and trace app, if you were lucky enough to install it a few months ago it was free for life, unfortunately its now pay for but well worth it. IMO

It also backs your data up every day if you want it to, which is fully viewable via there website.
 
That's where Wallet comes in :p

I'm going to keep Prey installed, I've logged all details of it and my phone in my Excel spreadsheet "safe" for future use should the worst happen and will continue to use Where's My Droid as well. Neither apps consume much space and don't run in the background until called upon and I like the alert features of WMD more but the logging and reporting of Prey is looking to be really good.

I'm guessing that for 99% of us realising that our phones have vanished will be a near instant thing, certainly not long enough for a would be thief to spend time trawling your data and resetting the phone anyway.

Or maybe that's just me :p
 
Last edited:
Had a bit more of a play with Prey. It turns out you'll only get reports sent out if you have either wi-fi or GPS enabled, so fair enough. But there are a few things that concern me. I have a pattern lock on my phone constantly - would rather be safe than sorry, especially if the remote locking doesn't work. However, you have to unlock the phone before the message you've asked Prey to display when activated pops up. A bit useless! Also, because of the automatic nature of it, it will just keep trying to get a GPS lock every xx mins, even if indoors, eventually no doubt running the battery flat. Another important consideration for me is that once the SIM has been changed, no internet-based tracker will work at all.

So at the moment I'm relying on Prey for the SIM-change notification feature alone (which works). And then I'll use WMD for location and just keep calling the number if necessary :p

EDIT: Ok, so my workaround for not being able to use Prey to display a message pop-up is to embed my contact details into the bottom of the wallpaper so they show up on the lock screen but get hidden by Sense under normal use.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom