fbpx

Google Working on Find My Device Service for Andriod Phones

Google Working on Find My Device Service for Andriod Phones
Source: Skills Dynamix

Google may be working on expanding Android’s Find My Device functionality to more closely match the capabilities of Apple’s Find My network. Conducting an API teardown of the latest Play services release, 9to5Google found evidence of an API called Spot. The outlet enabled the feature to get a “Find My Device network” toggle to show up within Android’s settings menu.

Google’s mobile operating system already includes a Find My Device feature that allows your phone to use a WiFi or cellular connection to help you locate it if you misplaced it. However, Apple’s Find My Network is by far better since it uses Bluetooth and ultra-wideband to the mix. Lost Apple and third-party devices can broadcast a short-range signal which nearby iOS devices then relay to Apple’s servers to help you find your lost item.

Another new feature that Google wants to launch is its earthquake detection feature: an Android phone-powered earthquake alert system. The concept of this feature is similar to Find My Device. There are more than 3 billion active Android devices, which is a large crowd to source information from, be it accelerometer data, or the location of a misplaced phone.

It remains unclear whether the Find My Device network will be able to find things other than phones, like Apple’s Find My network or Samsung’s Galaxy Find network are capable of doing. And of course, this being unpacked code from a Beta release, these changes may never see an actual public release.

If you see something out of place or would like to contribute to this story, check out our Ethics and Policy section.