GPS tracking is one of the most accurate ways of tracking an Android cell phone. Unfortunately, it is also true that leaving the GPS feature on all the time is a sure way to drain a phone’s battery quickly. SMS Spy is an alternative to traditional Android GPS trackers because the battery hungry GPS receiver doesn’t have to be left on at all times to enable the phone to be tracked.
How it works
SMS Spy is truly a stealth tracking application in that there is no icon created when the app is installed, instead the software runs as a background service, where it waits to respond to location update requests. To find out where the phone is location you simply need to send a SMS to the device with this exact text: ‘How are you???’. The device will respond by giving GPS data, address and a map link showing where the phone can found.
Limitations
The accuracy of this Android tracking app will vary depending on whether or not the GPS feature is turned on, if it is not, the app will use cell network data to give an approximate location of the device. Be warned, if network data is used to provide a location update the exact location of the phone may be off by several hundred feet. That said, it would be nice if the service could automatically turn on the GPS when a location update is requested and turn it off after the update is received.
The located device will usually show the ‘How are you???’ location request SMS as a notification. If you don’t want the device to show the location request SMS you can mask it by having the device display the message as some other system notification. Start by adding a new contact; name the surname ‘systemnumber’, and leave the other fields empty and give the contact the handset’s number.
When done right, the app will delete the location request SMS and an “Internal Service – SMS Database optimized and compressed” message will be displayed instead. This is a kind of workaround, because it is currently not possible to delete notifications but it is possible to overlay them with new ones.
Author Steve McFarlane
Steve is the founder and chief contributor of this site. Connect with Steve on Google+
Well done article that. I’ll make sure to use it wielsy.