A closer look at Remote Phone Tools for Android

I know more than a few people who are completely obsessed with keeping an eye on their smartphones.

You probably know the type I’m talking about. Yes, there are those of us who constantly check to make sure we haven’t missed an SMS or obsessively monitor the battery life of our handsets.

Fortunately, an XDA Forums member by the name of Floyd1973 has coded up a remote monitoring tool  for Google’s mobile OS dubbed Android Remote Phone Tools (ARPT).

Essentially, this app allows you to exercise basic control over your Android device when it is plugged into a Windows or Linux computer.

One of the coolest things about ARPT? It isn’t  limited to a specific brand of Android phone or  device. Meaning, it should work with both smartphones and tablets via USB.

With ARPT, users can more easily keep an eye on the battery status, turn airplane mode on or off, view all contacts stored on the device, and a lot more including:

* Manually update loaded contacts.

* See all message threads.

* Contact search function (name and number).

* Thread search function (name, number and content of last message).

* Send new message to existing thread number.

* Send new message to contact number.

* Send new message to never known number.

* Play ring on notification (default or chosen by user).

* Stop ring at fixed number of seconds.

* Show balloon notification for events with different level chosen by user.

The application is in beta right now, meaning it could have some issues and may not be the most stable piece of software around.

Still, if you use your Android device a lot while plugging away at your Windows PC or laptop this might be an application worth loading up. Interested? You can check it out here.