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I bought an iPhone 4 recently. I've been using Find my iPhone but I find it a little limited.

First, you need to have Wi-Fi or 3G to be able to deactivate or send a message. That consumes a lot of battery. Second, if you have only 3G enabled (which seems to be a more viable solution), the accuracy isn't that good. I've done some tests and it has detected my phone 100m away from where I am. And finally, if none of those are on, you can't lock your phone with a password, otherwise whoever has it won't be able to turn Wi-Fi or 3G on.

A friend who uses Android told me about LostPhone, which is capable of doing all the lock and alert functions by SMS too. I dug a bit and found FoneHome and TapTrace, but none of them seem to be SMS capable.

Does anyone know a solution to this?

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  • Your question is a little confusing. Are you intending to take preventative measures in the event of theft? BTW, the accuracy on iPhone 4 is better than 3GS. Which one do you have?
    – John
    Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 1:41
  • @HandyRandy to me it's pretty clear he's looking for preventative measures on any event of loss, with an iPhone 4 (not that this matters much). And I think the answer for a good software will have to include jailbreaking because it's the only way to have access to all phone resources like Find my iPhone has.
    – cregox
    Commented Feb 6, 2011 at 16:15
  • @HandyRandy sorry if the question was confusing. I just want to be able to know where my iPhone is in the incident I forget it somewhere or in the event of a theft. The thing is. I just didn't want my 3G or Wifi to be on all the time, even if I am not transmiting data all the time, they tend to drain the battery. @Cawas I guess if I want to be able to use the SMS feature I would have to either Jailbreak my iPhone or wait for Apple to implement something like, which my not happen.
    – lucasarruda
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 10:31

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If you lose your phone or it is stolen, it is likely to be miles away from your home and just knowing this allows you to use the 'Find My iPhone' feature on www.me.com to remotely wipe (and/or kill) the phone, or to make it bleep and put up a message if you realise you've left it at your friend/family-members' house.

An SMS-based app would require you to have another phone to find/lock/wipe your iPhone, plus there's always the chance that you forgot to run the app following a reboot, or that it crashed.

"Find My iPhone" is built into iOS, so you don't have to remember to run it.

Although 3G does use up more battery than 2.5G or 2G, this is not the primary cause of battery drain in a smart phone - try quitting some your apps to find out which one is draining the battery.

Also, read through the comments on the link you posted - there are some real unhappy users there who post about the problems. I wonder how many Android phones are out there that somebody could SMS-spam with the magic command to remotely-kill their phone....

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  • Thanks @JBRWilkinson ! I think the SMS solution is practical, but It must include some type of authentication. For now I think I'll just leave the 3G on, but too bad I hasn't got the precision of the Wifi-tracking. I wonder why it doesn't use the GPS which works just fine.
    – lucasarruda
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 10:22
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iLostMyi on BigBoss repo. You're in luck cuz a demo trial was just released today. I think it's exactly what you're looking for. It looks pretty cool.

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  • Thanks for sharing. For now I don't consider jail-breaking it and I'll stay with the 3G solution, unless I start to have low bat all the time.
    – lucasarruda
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 10:26

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