Being a recent victim of iPhone theft (in the last 24 hours) but unable to recover phone after using the "Find my iPhone" service, my flatmate and I sat down and threw round some ideas that might make this service more useful than it already is.
Even though we were able to track the iPhone whilst it was still on the move, by the time we got to where it had stopped, the culprit had gone inside to an apartment complex. After remotely locking the phone and sending a message via "Find my iPhone", a car took off to which we could only assume were the thieves.
So we came up with a couple of ideas that could be built into the service by Apple which would make tracking your iPhone/iPad a lot easier and possibly make it more of a deterrent for theft...
1. in the case of iPhone 4's and iPad 2's, utilise the front facing camera, possibly taking snapshots every 10 - 30 seconds with the possibility of getting a face shot. The iPhone would then send these images to your apple ID email address.
2. Activate a theft lockdown mode on your phone. You could activate this from logging into the service. This would include an alarm sounding at full volume and not being able to be shut off, the phone would be unresponsive to any home or lock button presses which would not allow for it to be turned off. The only way it could be switched off is if the phone battery went flat or phone was destroyed (something i think most of us would prefer rather than someone successfully getting away with our much loved devices).
Luckily, we have a fixed address of where the phone was last, appears to be a mobile unlocking shop, which has been passed onto the police. Being a dodgy area, we weren't overly keen on putting ourselves in harms way for a phone so thought we'd let the boys in blue deal with it.
Apple, please take note - i think implementing these ideas would make it one step closer to deterring the theft of iPhones/iPads...
Even though we were able to track the iPhone whilst it was still on the move, by the time we got to where it had stopped, the culprit had gone inside to an apartment complex. After remotely locking the phone and sending a message via "Find my iPhone", a car took off to which we could only assume were the thieves.
So we came up with a couple of ideas that could be built into the service by Apple which would make tracking your iPhone/iPad a lot easier and possibly make it more of a deterrent for theft...
1. in the case of iPhone 4's and iPad 2's, utilise the front facing camera, possibly taking snapshots every 10 - 30 seconds with the possibility of getting a face shot. The iPhone would then send these images to your apple ID email address.
2. Activate a theft lockdown mode on your phone. You could activate this from logging into the service. This would include an alarm sounding at full volume and not being able to be shut off, the phone would be unresponsive to any home or lock button presses which would not allow for it to be turned off. The only way it could be switched off is if the phone battery went flat or phone was destroyed (something i think most of us would prefer rather than someone successfully getting away with our much loved devices).
Luckily, we have a fixed address of where the phone was last, appears to be a mobile unlocking shop, which has been passed onto the police. Being a dodgy area, we weren't overly keen on putting ourselves in harms way for a phone so thought we'd let the boys in blue deal with it.
Apple, please take note - i think implementing these ideas would make it one step closer to deterring the theft of iPhones/iPads...