We expect most people who activate the new “Find My iPhone” feature now available as part of the iPhone 3.0 software update and Apple’s $99/year Mobile Me service will find their iPhone under their couch. Or in their other pair of jeans. Or in their friend’s car.

One quick-thinking Apple customer found his iPhone in the hands of a thief–and tracked the guy down in real time using Find My iPhone, some Spanish translation, and maybe a little bit of good luck.

For the full blow-by-blow account with simulated screenshots of the whole experience, check out Kevin’s blog post here, you won’t regret it.

Here’s just a taste of the moment he came upon the iPhone thief:

“Have you got it?” I asked as I marched up to the guy, acting far more intimidating than I felt. Our iPhone-pilfering friend apparently works at the sketchy bar, and as he fished around in his bag, he gave a questionable alibi about having found the phone, intending to return it, but being intimidated by “all these scary-looking messages” that kept popping up on the display. “Um, yeah, those were from me,” I replied curtly. He pulled my phone out, totally unharmed, and handed it over. I resisted the urge to giggle.

I shook his hand - Lord knows why I did that - and the three of us walked off. We laughed triumphantly, adrenaline racing, feeling like the Jack Bauer trio. (Disregard the fact that we’d just left a Lego convention.)

For those just catching up to this new feature, if you’re a duly paid-up Mobile Me member, Find my iPhone allows you to do four major things remotely, as long as your phone’s got juice and a good connection to its network:

• Send a custom text message to your phone that pops up (and notifies you via email when it has confirmation the message has been delivered to the screen), which you can use for a reward notice or a number to reach you.
  
• Locate your iPhone on a map to pretty remarkable levels of accuracy
  
• Play an audible notification via your iPhone’s speakers
  
• Wipe your iPhone’s data completely, protecting your privacy
  

Kevin notes some issues with the feature that could be improved upon:

- Even though iPhone’s alert notification plays whether it’s on vibrate or not, it still obeys the ringer volume - so you can still, regrettably, keep it from playing. Also it’s a lighter daintier sound effect than we’d prefer for locating something by sound. Hell, I’d prefer it if I could take pictures, play my iTunes library, and tase whoever was holding it.

- There’s no real reason MobileMe shouldn’t push the location to us; needing to refresh the location repeatedly on the webpage was silly.

- None of this would have been possible without Mark’s 3G USB dongle for his MacBook. The biggest single problem is that you can’t use me.com from the iPhone, meaning you can’t find one iPhone using another. Hopefully Apple realizes this.

We agree–Apple should override any sound restrictions on the phone and blare the alert as loud as its hardware is capable of. Otherwise, this feature seems like a pretty big homerun in practice–at only $8.25 per month, if the $99/year cost of Mobile Me is broken down per month, if this was the only feature of the service alone, it might be worth it as a pretty effective insurance policy.

Filed under: iPhone News