The scary thing about the Terminator wasn’t just that he was a highly effective killing machine. (I’ll leave Schwarzenegger’s line deliveries out of this.) No, what always really creeped me out was that he would find you, wherever you were, and nothing would stop him.

Like Arnold’s most famous role, Sprite’s program of the same name is also an efficient high-tech eraser, and now it has added tracking capability to its armamentarium as well.

Terminator was originally made as a way to wipe (or lock) your smartphone’s data if it was lost or stolen. Sending an SMS command initiates an erasing (or locking) protocol so you can rest assured that your valuable data will not fall into the wrong hands.

Now Sprite has added GPS integration so you can try to find your lost smartphone before taking the nuclear step of wiping it. How does this feature stack up? Click past the jump to find out!

There’s a decent chance that you’re only reading this review because you’re thinking about entering JAMM’s Daily Sprite Giveaway and you’re wondering if the chance of winning Terminator is worth the few seconds of your time it will take to leave a comment. If you have a Windows Mobile phone, the short answer is: YES, you lazy bum!

What exactly is Terminator? Here’s how Sprite described it in a press message when it was released in August:

The software works on any Windows Mobile phone and once installed, hides away in the background until activated when required. If a phone is lost, owners just need to send an SMS message to their phone from a paired phone to lock down the phone so that a password is required to access the data. For additional peace of mind a wipe command can be sent which clears the entire contents of their phone – including memory cards. This can be used to decommission phones before passing them to friends or colleagues. If a phone is stolen, and the thief replaces the SIM card, Sprite Terminator detects this and informs the owner via a SMS message to the previously partnered phone so that the phone can be locked or wiped.

Couldn’t have said it better myself, and I tried. Since the original release, Sprite has added a remote access feature that allows you to send a Terminator command to your smartphone using a web page. And they’ve added GPS support, which will be my focus from here on out; Terminator’s lock and wipe features are used in very similar ways, but (not having Sprite Backup) I wasn’t going to test “wipe” on my own non-lost PPC.

So I’ve already configured Terminator on my smartphone, set a password, and paired it with my other cell phone. Oh no! I can’t find my smartphone! Where is it? I send an SMS from my cell to my smartphone, “spritecmd <password> gps”. On my cell, I get back an SMS looking something like this:

They don’t make screenshot programs for my “dumb” cell phone, but you get the idea. Latitude, longitude, link. I can either take the link to the nearest computer and fire up a browser, or, if my second, partnered phone that is not lost happens to be another smartphone with a Java-capable internet browser like Opera 8 (but not, sadly, PIE), I can simply tap the link and up pops a map.

How cool is that? Pretty darn cool. However, my genius plan to use Terminator to track down my hypothetically lost smartphone has one big flaw. The smartphone has to be connected to a live GPS receiver in order to find its location. My GPS receiver is a Bluetooth model that mostly lives in my car. See how this could be a problem? Models like the TyTN II with built-in GPS have a better chance at success simply because there is no way to separate the GPS receiver from the rest of the smartphone, but GPS still has to be active. Unless the thief is directionally challenged, that is not a safe bet.

At least Terminator’s locking and wiping functions would still work, so even if the smartphone is permanently lost, all its data will be safe. However, I would love to see integration of something similar to the latest mobile Google Maps, which uses cell tower signals to approximately locate the device, as a backup if a GPS signal cannot be found.

Switching gears to the less sexy part of the program — the part on the protected smartphone — Terminator is easy to manage. Sprite has made this handy application “set and forget.”

Once Terminator is installed and configured, it runs quietly in the background until catastrophe strikes and you need it. Setting up the GPS portion of the application is a simple matter of selecting an option…

…and checking a box.

If your coordinates pop right up when you “Test GPS”, you’re good to go. Otherwise, Sprite’s website can help out.

To wrap up this quick tour, Terminator was already a useful program that is guaranteed to provide peace of mind and could potentially be a lifesaver. The addition of GPS integration is a terrific example of Sprite’s efforts to innovate. As more devices are built with hard-wired GPS receivers and Sprite continues to fine-tune this feature, Terminator’s GPS capabilities will become more and more crucial to our mobile lives.

Now, if only this worked for my housekeys.

Where to Buy: Sprite’s site, $14.95 for all WM 5 and 6 phones

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