Lookout for Android Can Now Find your Phone Even When the Battery is Dead

Last week I told you that Lookout, the popular security app for Android, was teasing a big announcement for this week.  Today their new update began rolling out to users and it came with several new features, but the one getting the most attention is called “Signal Flare”, which allows users to locate lost phones, even when the battery has died.

Signal Flare works by frequently flagging the location of your device so that if the battery dies, or is removed by a thief, you stand a better chance of still being able to locate it.  The company claims to locate thousands of phones every day for their users, but that when the service fails a battery is to blame in 30 percent of the cases.

While Signal Flare is the hot item in version 3.0 of the app, it’s not the only improvement.  Lookout also rolled out a new user interface, an “Activity Feed” that lets you see what’s going on in a single glance at the app dashboard and a “Safe Dialer” protection which protects against dialer-based attacks, such as the one recently seen hitting the Galaxy S3.

For all of these improvements, Lookout remains a free app (there is a premium version as well).  Version 3.0 is now live in the Google Play Store.  If you already have the service installed then you likely have received the update pushed to your device automatically.

NOTE: I should also, in fairness, note that Avast also produces a very good, and free, mobile security app.  Thanks to Milos over at Avast for pointing it out to me following my post last week.