Sony celebrated the Fourth of July by announcing that their ‘my Xperia’ service will start to roll out within the next few weeks. As we reported yesterday, this resource will allow an owner of a 2012-2013 Xperia to remotely manage their devices in case it is lost or stolen. By sounding an alert, mapping the phone’s location in the hopes of retrieving it, or even erasing your internal and external SD card to keep your sensitive information from getting into the wrong hands, Sony seems to have taken their customers privacy into serious consideration.
Our colleagues over at VentureBeat voiced the concern that Google should have a similar type service of their own. As they mentioned, Google is the last to get on the recovery train, as Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, HTC, BlackBerry, and now Sony all have a way to help their customers to keep their phones safe. While the Android owner does have a service for education and business customers, it currently does not offer it to the general public. The question is, does it really need one?
Just take a quick trip to the Play Store and, after searching for ‘security apps’, you will find over 60 results, some of which also deal with antivirus and malware protection on top of the other things mentioned above. Some of these apps come from such big names as Avast, AVG, Norton, McAfee and Lookout. There are freemium offerings as well as paid versions. You will also find others that are from lesser known companies, but John Q. Public has definitely got enough out there that aims to assist in getting done what needs done.
So the question remains: does Google need its own recovery service? On the one hand, it might be good to have an official app, one that is straight out of Mountain View. On the other hand, with the amount of quality security applications already on the Play Store, would it be just a waste of time and resources for Google to do the required research and development to release a quality service worthy of the search company’s name? Let me know down below.