Microsoft’s Find your lost phone facility seems broken

Rating: Would you pay to nuke your handset via MyPhone?

An intriguing facility mentioned by Microsoft at the Windows Phone (Mobile 6.5) launch was the ability to erase and/or lock your Windows handset remotely. What the company omitted to mention is that it forms part of its Premium MyPhone service.

MyPhone is an intrinsic part of Windows Phone, although it can be downloaded (even from Marketplace) for other Windows 6.x handsets. Effectively it’s an extended online phone data backup service.

The first remote handset data erase program GoMo News remembers came from Synchronica, although its UK reseller took all the kudos for the ‘screaming’ phone.

The ‘screaming’ phone was a facility to (remotely) make a handset emit an ear-splitting noise if its owner realised the phone had been stolen.  Microsoft hasn’t copied that particular facility.

What it has done is provided a ‘Ring’ capability that enables a Windows handset owner to remotely cause the handset to ring and to display a simple message. Such as “Give it back, you ***!”

This only works, of course, if the handset is switched on. There’s no remote wake-up capability. The second option is to remotely lock the handset. It can then only be unlocked with the password the owner has set via MyPhone.

The last option is to erase all the data on the handset. GoMo News wasn’t brave enough to test this facility because it wipes all the handset’s data by performing a factory reset.

The capability which really sounded the most interesting is called ‘Find your lost phone’. This is supposed to provide the last known location of the phone on a map. Currently this doesn’t seem to work.

The help file for Find your lost phone suggests that the handset might need to have its GPS capability enabled but that fault doesn’t seem to apply to the ZTE Bluebelt II used to test MyPhone. The GPS facility definitely works, so the problem wasn’t identified.

The catch is that Microsoft wants to charge for this facility, although the first time is free. It levies $4.99 (€4.89) for a seven day period of usage but the number of usages is restricted to three (rings and locks) and one (erase). Or you pay again.

GoMo checked to see if the UK mobile operator, 3 UK, supports these ‘premium’ services and, yes,  it is listed by Microsoft as doing so. We look forward to trying out Find your lost phone when it does work.

Tony is based in Surrey and is a veteran comms journalist. Tony also writes on the UK market…. contact him here mailto:tony@mobileinsight.co.uk