Wavesecure is a product from tenCube who was founded in 2005 for the purpose of finding a solution for lost cell phones. Wavesecure was tenCube’s answer and has since been available for many cell phone platforms, but just recently they released Wavesecure Beta for Android. Wavesecure was one of three overall winners of Android Developer Challenge 2 and can be downloaded via the Android market now. The function of the application is very simply; Wavesecure will help you remotely lock, track and backup/wipe your lost cell phone.
Install and Overview
Setting up Wavesecure is fairly easy, and doesn’t take too much time. After downloading the application, you run it for the first time and it will ask for your phone’s number. After entering it, Wavesecure will send itself a text message to verify the number, all automatically. The next screen you’ll see is for entering 1 to 9 buddies and a PIN code for locking and unlocking the phone. The reason for the buddies is simple. If you loose your phone, you can’t send yourself a text message of where it is, so it sends a message to your buddies for you, so they can help you out. You can enter the phone number of your buddies manually or via your contact list. Just be careful when reviewing their phone numbers because even though I had a country code in my contacts’ number, it tried to enter an addition “1″ in there. I had to remove the addition. After that, you are brought to the main screen.
Wave Secure Main Page
From the main screen you can access the features of Wavesecure easily. From top to bottom it has:
- Backup – Send your contacts, SMS and call logs to Wavesecure’s server for online retrieval or backup to the phone.
- Upload Media – Send your files to the server, again a backup feature if you want.
- Restore – Restore the contacts and SMS backup you just sent to the server.
- Lock Down Phone – Lock the phone as it is now. *This feature probably wouldn’t be used much, I mean who plans to have their phone lost or stolen?
- Wipe Now – Basically like a factory wipe. Get rid of any personal data on the phone now. *Again, doing this from the phone would be strange unless you are planning on losing your phone.
Note that the first time you run the software, after registering and entering your info, it brings you to the main page automatically. Any access after that, and you must enter your PIN before you can perform any of the above functions, so that no one can just pick up your phone and wipe your info clean. NOTE: This only works if you press the “Back” button to exit Wavesecure. If you press “Home” then later enter Wavesecure it will not ask for your PIN. Be sure and EXIT Wavesecure totally after you use it by hitting the “Back” button.
Wavesecure PIN
There is only one other main screen for Wavesecure, that is the settings, which is accessed via the menu button.
Wavesecure Settings
Here you can change a few of the autolock features as well as add an alarm to SIM change and add trusted SIMs to the list.
Usage
Lock
The first function of Wavesecure is locking your device. It can do this a few different ways. You can lock the phone directly, through the application or you can lock it remotely through the web interface via Wavesecure’s website. Finally, it can be auto locked when a SIM card different than the original is placed into the phone.
Wavesecure Lock Features
In addition to locking the phone, it will display a message to any would be thief or good Samaritan who might find your lost phone in the café you were last at. You can even have the phone sound an alarm as an additional warning. All the functions found in the application itself are duplicated online via the web interface.
Backup
Wavesecure Backup
Backing up your personal information is as easy as a single press of Backup on the phone or done remotely via the backup feature access on the web interface. It’s not quick, but it is incremental so that backup only sends new or changed information after your first backup. So while the first go at it might take a while, subsequent backups happen faster and with less data requirements. I’d suggest performing your first backup while on a Wifi connection. It took my phone about 8 minutes for the first back up over a shady EDGE connection. After backup, my info was available for review on the web interface:
Track
Wavesecure Track
When I talk about the track feature I’m actually going to combine two features into what I think should be referred to as one feature. The main point of track according to Wavesecure’s website is to know when a SIM card is placed in the phone. Anytime an unknown SIM card is placed into the phone an SMS is sent to your buddies, and an alert is sent to the phone and I’m sure on the web interface as well. (I cannot verify this as my phone does not have a SIM card). The other half of this feature is what they call location. You can determine your phone’s location from the web interface and this should help you determine where you lost it, or where it’s going without you. Note that is you have GPS disabled it will send the location based off the cell tower information. For me, that wasn’t very accurate, it was about 1.5 miles off of where I was. But, that’s still pretty good.
Wipe
Wavesecure Wipe
Finally, if all else fails and you have determined you cannot get your phone back, you can always send a remote wipe command so that all personal data is erased from the device. If you have a proper backup of your data from the backup feature above, you might want to send the Wipe command as soon as you know the phone is lost. Then continue to track it down, if you find it, a simple restore command will get you back in business.
Web Interface
Finally, here is a view of the web interface you get when logged in online. It has all the features found on the phone, plus the tracking feature and you can review your contacts/SMS and call logs as well.
Wavesecure Web Interface
Security
To test how secure my phone is when locked, I spent some time with Wavesecure. I locked up my phone remotely and tried everything I could think of to get it to unlock without a passcode. It did a fairly good job of keeping my phone secure. I then unlocked with my PIN on the phone itself. However, I am sure I could have gotten past the security with a simple factory wipe using “Home”+”Power On”. Of course that will wipe your data, which is good, but then the thief gets your phone, which is bad. I’m sure a smart enough thief can get what they want, but for the average crook, this might help you save your phone one day.
As noted on AndroidSPIN, Wavesecure is offering free lifetime Wavesecure accounts through Jan 31st to Android users, so if you are interested download from the Android market now and have a go.
