Google pushed yet another App into the Play Store today. This time it’s the Android Device Manager, which joins the many other Google apps they’ve broken out of the OS and pushed into the Play Store. This way they can push out updates much quicker. Instead of pushing out an OTA which has to get approved by carriers on devices that are not Nexus, and such.
So far the Android Device Manager app from the Play Store appears to work exactly as the service did when it was part of Google Play Services when it launched in August. It does show you devices associated with your Google account (which for me is a ton), it also allows you to locate your device, ring that device, and protect the information on the device by remote locking it or doing a factory reset on the device. This was Google’s answer to Apple’s Find my iPhone/iPad/iPod/Mac apps that they have for all their devices. Motorola also has their own service that does pretty much the same thing, except, using Touchless Control you can say “Okay Google Now, Find my Phone”. But of course that only works if it’s in that area.
Back in August, Google launched the Android Device Manager, and they did promise that there would be an app coming later that month, well obviously there was a delay. But whatever the case may have been, it’s here now for us to use, and of course talk about. You can pick it up in the Play Store now, It appears to be different from the actual Android Device Manager that’s part of Google Play Services, but we aren’t sure what exactly is different as of right now. I’m sure some are going to grab the APK and tear it apart to see what’s new or different. So we can look forward to that.
How many of you have already downloaded the Android Device Manager? Let us know in the comments below.