The system should prevent personal data theft

Jan 9, 2015 12:58 GMT  ·  By

Last summer, a bill that required all smartphones manufactured after July 1, 2015 to include a kill switch when sold, was signed by California governor Jerry Brown in an attempt to make phones a less attractive target for thieves.

The kill switch allows customers who have been dispossessed of their handset to remotely lock, wipe and disable the device.

But back then no one expected device manufacturers to start producing separate batches of products to be offered exclusively on the Californian market.

Qualcomm jumps on the kill switch bandwagon

However, since then some device makers and software developers have come to consider this scenario. For example, Google’s latest Android itineration Lollipop takes advantage of this kill switch mechanism. The same exists in Apple’s new iOS 8 and even Windows Phone 8.1 has it.

Now it appears chip giant Qualcomm has embedded a similar system into one of its latest chips. We’re talking about the Snapdragon 810 which is supposed to power a lot of upcoming flagship devices like the Samsung Galaxy S6 or HTC Hima.

The mechanism is called “SafeSwitch” and will let users “set a password remotely, erase and recover data, and locate or lock a lost or stolen device.”

SafeSwitch is a little bit different than other systems offering the same capability. Qualcomm says the mechanism is impossible to “hack” and that’s not because it is hardware-based but due to the early activation process during the boot process. This happens way before the firmware on the phone starts rolling.

For the time being, we don’t know what other Snapdragon chips will take advantage of SafeSwitch, but chances are Qualcomm might make this a standard for its future designs.

Snapdragon 810 has SafeSwitch technology (4 Images)

Qualcomm announces SafeSwitch
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