Ways To Localize Where Your Lost Phone Is

I think many people were at least once upset by the fact they could not remember where they left their mobile phone. In this case it is enough to call the number and the phone starts to ring or vibrate. Even worse is when you get home and realize with astonishment that your phone is in your pocket. But if you forgot your phone somewhere (in a restaurant, taxi, etc..) or a “good” person helped you to get rid of it, it is unlikely that you will recover it.

Still, there are some methods which can help you to be a little less disappointed and at least hope for the best. If your phone is not very important (assuming you do not have any Nokia N900) certainly the contacts and the messages are. Most people do not back up this type of information and the “disaster” is inevitable when their phone disappears. All you can do is to call and ask the operator to lock the SIM card in order to not let the one who stole your phone to speak on your money.

Unfortunately there are GSM operators in the world who do not yet provide solutions for locating mobile phones. As hope dies last, there is a solution to try to recover the phone from the person who found it or stole it. The solution is to use a program that allows the localization of your phone.

Micro LMTS

This program was created by a company in India (Micro Technologies Ltd) and is called Micro LMTS. (LMTS – Lost Mobile Tracking System).

First you must download the application from http://www.microlmts.net/inner.aspx. There are three versions available: Micro-LMTS Lite, Micro-LMTS Elite and Micro SAM, the most complete being the last. The installation within the phone is relatively simple and if you can’t handle it, there is a manual that covers all of the stages of installation on Nokia phones, Blackberry and those with Windows Mobile.

Once the application is installed, depending on which version you paid, you have access to different options such as notification when the SIM is changed, clearing the information from the phone’s memory, finding the phone’s location via SMS, removing contacts, pictures and videos through SMS, Web access, etc. If the phone is lost or stolen, the application sends the owner an SMS / e-mail to an address specified by him which will show the geographical location where the phone is. According to the manufacturer of this application, it works even if your card has been changed and it can send the new number of the SIM which was inserted into the phone.

You have access to these facilities for 12 months, the time when the license is valid. Prices on the site are in Indian rupees and the most expensive version costs about 5 dollars. From what I saw on the Web, the application is compatible with Nokia – N series, E, Xpress Music – Blackberry, PDA phones and a lot of products from Asus, HP, HTC, Mio, E-TEN, Toshiba and products with Windows Mobile.

MTS – Mobile Tracking System

A similar application called MTS – Mobile Tracking System – was created by the Romanian company Fightersoft Multimedia and can be downloaded at: http://mts.fightersoftinc.com. MTS is a tracking solution using the GSM technology and is a SMS messaging or e-mail solution that can be installed on any mobile phone running Windows Mobile, Symbian or Java and is connected to the Internet.

Google Latitude

Another application would be Google Latitude, which can be installed on both phone and computer. With it you can see the location of friends, receive notifications when they are close, etc. If you are concerned of the private information, Latitude has a number of settings through which you can control who can see your current location and can even transmit a location other than the true one. Latitude’s disadvantage is that once removed from the phone’s SIM card (in the case the phone is stolen) you will not know how to localize your phone because you do not know the phone number.

From my point of view these applications are welcomed but I am not too convinced of their usefulness. Once you lose your phone, the chances to recover it are extremely small, especially in developing countries.

If the evolution of the number of Internet connections in recent years seems fascinating to you, then you’ll be amazed to find out that the percentage of those who have a mobile phone increased from 15% in 2002 to 60% in 2009, reaching the highest rate of those who posses mobile phones ever reached.

According to TG Daily, compared to this rate, the doubling of the Internet’s penetration rate  from 11% to 23% in the same period seems almost insignificant. The same report of U.N. made a top of the most advanced countries in terms of technological infrastructure:

* Sweden
* South Korea
* Denmark
* Netherlands
* Iceland
* Norway

These countries have an advantage over the U.S., Hong Kong, India and China due to low population in rural areas. In these conditions it seems that we are in the most propitious time to develop mobile applications and optimized Websites  for browsing on mobile devices. More mobile device manufacturers have agreed that by 2012 to develop a universal phone charger (actually a port in an universal format, which seems to be MicroUSB). The goal is to remove approximately 50,000 tons of duplicate chargers. The bad thing is that the charger will not have its own GPS application, so you can’t find out where it is its location, if someone steals it.

We agree with the mobile device manufacturers: we do not need three phone chargers to charge three phones. So far to this project have joined 3 Group, KTF, LG, Mobilkom Austria, Nokia, Orange, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Telecom Italia, AT & T, Telefónica, Telenor, Telstra, Motorola, T-Mobile and Vodafone.

Even if they spoke only of cell phones we can assume that other types of mobile devices like MP3 players, GPS systems, will adopt the universal charger.