San Francisco's district attorney says he's optimistic that Apple and Samsung are making progress on a system that would render stolen smartphones unusable, but the same isn't true of Microsoft and Google.
On Thursday representatives of Apple and Samsung visited George Gascón at his office in San Francisco to demonstrate their work.
The four major players in the smartphone industry have come under pressure from the law enforcement community, led by Gascón and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to do something about the increasing number of smartphone thefts across the U.S. The thefts often involve force and violence and in many cases phone users are threatened with guns or knives. On at least one occasion, a phone user was killed for their iPhone.
Apple's response has been an activation lock that requires a user ID and password to reset or reactivate a phone that has been locked, disabled or wiped. Samsung is installing "Lojack for Mobile Devices" on new models of its Galaxy S4.
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