As you probably know, there are a handful of new theft protection features[1] that have been rolled out recently.
Earlier in October, all of my devices got the new features… except for my Fairphone who got the new “Theft detection lock” and “Offline device lock”, but not the new “Remote lock”
You can check how it works on https://android.com/lock … it’s really neat, because right after your phone is stolen, you might be outdoor (so, no access to your usual computer) and you probably don’t have any other device on which you’re already logged in your Google account (which would allow you to trigger a remote lock and/or wipe). So, if you enrolled you can just get anyone to loan their device for a few seconds, enough to visit the above link and trigger the lock just with your phone number.
I reported this issue on another channel on October 28th:
You can check it yourself at: Settings → Security and Privacy → Device unlock → Theft protection.
This is what you’ll see on a Fairphone: there should be a “Remote lock” option, between the header “Remotely secure device” and “Find and erase your device”, but unfortunately it’s missing:
This is how it should look like instead (verified on my workplace phone):
After some investigation, this is due to Fairphone not having declared the android.hardware.telephony.subscription feature (which is part of the default telephony features since Android 13)
This is also known as FEATURE_TELEPHONY_SUBSCRIPTION, and without that, several APIs will be unavailable to apps running on a Fairphone. The affected one in this specific case, is probably getPhoneNumber (of course), since the quick Remote lock needs to provide the phone number to enroll in the system.
[1] This is a really important feature to have: a friend of mine got their phone snatched, and I’ve been meters away from two other people who got their phone snatched while out. I live in London UK and it’s a serious problem (link to a Channel 4 documentary if you want to understand better… of course, it won’t stop thiefs shipping stolen phones abroad to be torn apart for spare parts)
