The BlackBerry Shield sounds like a great idea in that RIM will be able to offer some of the great functionality of SmrtGuard, to all BlackBerry users. On the other hand, it’s generally bad business for RIM to be competing with people like SmrtGuard, who have done so much to make the BlackBerry better for their users. The message RIM are saying is: don’t bother making anything useful, because we’ll steal your idea and make it ourselves.
Recently leaked BlackBerry Shield info suggests we’ll be seeing:
- Remote Device Wipe – in case of loss of the terminal, just log in to BB Shield to remove all data from the device and / or memory card.
- “Lost & Found” Screen – you can customize the sentence on the screen to display that the BlackBerry is lost and show any information about the content (i.e. “take me please“).
- The ability to remotely set the password on the BlackBerry.
- A loud bell alarm – useful option, even if you’ve lost your BlackBerry (at home) – once you’ve activated this option, your BB will ‘behave’ loud sounding an alarm, which will hopefully prompt a passerby (or yourself) to pick up your lost BlackBerry.
- Tracking capability – based on the GSM transmitters and / or GPS position that is constantly monitored in the BlackBerry unit, and there may be the possibility of seeing it on the map (like Google Maps) from the BB Shield dashboard.
- Backup – create wireless backup and restore, which can be set automatically exercise in the given time intervals
In the meantime, you should definitely be checking out SmrtGuard-Free, a product every BlackBerry user should have.
