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Phone playing up? Can’t work out what’s wrong with the blessed thing? Before you hurl it against a wall — stop! A new LG service lets LG staff fix your phone by reaching into it with their minds.
Well, with their computers actually. When you contact LG customer services with a problem, they’ll connect to your phone over 3G or Wi-Fi, accessing settings and tracking down the problem.
Unless you have a problem with 3G or Wi-Fi, in which case you’re on your own, Sunshine.
The service will be available to owners of premium Optimus smart phones, including the LG Optimus 2X, Optimus Black and Optimus 3D. A Remote Call app is installed on the phone, so LG wonks users can diagnose the phone’s problem. No word on whether LG staff can turn it off and turn it on again for you.
LG says staff can’t access any personal information without the users’ consent, so your messages, calendars or pictures of underparts
are safe.
Experts taking control of your device from a distance is a system that works well on many computers — if you’ve ever had anyone fix your computer by remote control, it’s an amusingly unsettling feeling watching your possessed pointer zip round the screen without you touching the mouse. We like to pretend our computers have had enough of our nonsense and decided they can do things better without us.
The remote maintenance
system also dishes out software upgrades direct to customers’ phones, so
updates that previously would have required a connection to a computer
simply show up wirelessly. It’s called Firmware Over The Air (FOTA) — it’s the latest mobile phone buzzword.
The service launched in Korea in May and is coming to Europe, the Asia Pacific region and South and Central America in the second half of the year.
