If you’re an absent-minded smartphone owner, here’s a good reason to get an Amazon Echo. TrackR just updated an app that promises to find your misplaced (or stolen) phone no matter what (or where).
The new app runs on Alexa, the voice-controled virtual assistant that runs on Amazon Echo.
TrackR’s first release, as shown in a widely televised Echo ad, lets you ask Alexa to ring your phone. And, your phone will ring, no matter where it is, even if it is silent mode. (The commercial implies this will work even if your gorgeous Golden Lab eats the device in question.)
The updated version of the app, or “Skill” in Amazon (AMZN) speak, goes further. The new edition of TrackR will provide Alexa (and you) with the last-known location of your phone whether it’s right next to you, in your office 10 miles away, or, conceivably, thousands of miles distant. That assumes, I guess, that it still has battery power and a cellular connection.
From the press release:
Once the skill has been enabled, customers can simply say, “Alexa, ask TrackR to find my phone,” and Alexa will provide the last known address of the phone–no matter where it is in the world.
Of course, if your phone rings in Japan and you’re in Boston, it’s unclear what you will do but at least you know it’s out there. To be fair, Apple iPnone and Android phones also offer “find my phone” features but the growng popularity of the Echo/Alexa tandem, makes this news worth noting.
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The new TrackR Skill is available now, free of charge. TrackR also sells small widgets you can attach to your keys or other valuables to make them more findable; no additional hardware is needed for the phone version.
Santa Barbara, Calif.-based TrackR received an unknown amount of investment from Amazon’s Alexa Fund, which provides up to $100 million annually to companies developing cool apps for the personal assistant.
For more on Alexa, watch:
While Alexa focuses on the home front, it also competes with smartphone-based virtual personal assistants like Apple (AAPL) Siri and Google (GOOGL).
