Sony Hopes To Make Lost/Stolen Phones A Thing Of The Past

A while back Sony trademarked the term “My Xperia.”  When that news first broke many simply assumed that Sony was working on their own home made cloud service.  Everyone else is doing it so it made sense that Sony would join the party.  Well it turns out that “My Xperia” isn’t going to be a cloud service but rather a remote tracking service.  Here’s some information about the service straight from Sony:

Can you describe “my Xperia” in a sentence?

Sure – “When the unpredictable happens, “my Xperia” helps you locate your misplaced Sony smartphone and protect your personal data”

Why have you created this – what’s the inspiration?

We recognise that your Sony Xperia smartphone is equally as important as other valuables like wallets and keys, but it’s also just as easily misplaced.

The thinking behind the app is to anticipate those unpredictable situations, where your smartphone might end up lost or misplaced – when this happens, “my Xperia” is designed to give you piece of mind by helping you a) locate and find your phone and b) ensure private info doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

Can you tell us a little bit about any key features and how it’ll work?

It’s really simple – you activate the app in your phone’s settings and use Google ID to sign in tomyxperia.sonymobile.com to access the central interface.

From here, you’ll be able to control a number of remote functions –

• Locate your smartphone on a map
• Sound an alert to get someone’s attention – it’ll also override silent mode and wake the display 
• Lock the phone to keep info private, and ping a message with contact details or…
• Erase both internal and external SD card info / data if required

Can you tell us about the beta launch, and plans going forward?

We’re running a phased launch in the Nordics on select 2024 Xperia smartphones running ICS. We’ll start with Xperia Acro S and add new devices over the coming weeks.

Users who are able to participate in the pilot will receive a notification in their Xperia when the service is available to them.

Following the notification, over-the-air download/installation via Update Center (the app which also brings OTA software-updates to your Xperia smartphone) is required, and the final step includes activation via Settings -> Xperia™ -> my Xperia.

The idea is to grab as much feedback / input on the service as possible, so we can perfect and tweak before full global rollout – please drop any suggestions, questions or things you’d like to see in the comments below. Or share your experiences and questions with other users on oursupport forum

 

While some people may say that a service like this just infringes on our privacy even more, I think services like these are a good idea and I see other manufacturers bringing this onto their phones as well.  There are some options similar to this from app developers, but I would personally prefer it coming straight from the manufacturers instead.

What are you guys’ thoughts about a service like this?  Good idea?  Creepy?

[Sony]