[Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] ZippyDan:
Long story short. I want to turn my old Android phone (HTC Inspire 4G) into a tracking device to catch a thief. The area near my house is plagued by motorcycle thieves who swipe bags from walking pedestrians. My idea is to carry a bait bag with an old, broken laptop in it and sew my phone to the inside of the bag where it will not be found. For my idea to work best, I need software that can perform specific functions, and so I come here for recommendations on how to accomplish this.

I need the device to operate in an ultra-low power mode where it is only listening for text messages and all sound is turned off. I don't know how long I will have to walk around with the bag before the thieves takes the bait, so I need the phone to conserve as much power as possible until the actual tracking operation begins.

Once the bag is in the thieves hands, I need to be able to control and activate the phone via text message. The phone must be in Silent Mode so that the thieves don't hear the incoming text messages. Additionally, I would not want the screen to light up or for any other message indicator to possibly shine through the bag's fabric and tip them off about the presence of the phone.

First, I will be using a "disposable" prepaid SIM card (lets call this the trackingSIM). I don't want to use my actual postpaid account with unlimited internet (lets call this mySIM). I need mySIM to communicate with the trackingSIM. So the problem is that the phone WON'T have unlimited internet access when it is stolen. I'll need to activate that remotely. Usually this is done by sending a specific text message to the Carrier with a code that activates unlimited internet for a period of time and deducts the cost from a balance on the SIM. But since I won't actually have the phone in my possession, I'll need some kind of program that allows me to remote control the phone and tell the phone to send a text message on its own. In summary, I need to send a text message from mySIM to the trackingSIM which will then trigger the trackingSIM to send another text message to a specific number. (like, if I send "SENDTXT 5551212 internets" from mySIM to trackingSIM, then the trackingSIM phone would resend a text message "internets" to the number 5551212)

Once internet is activated, the Carrier sends a text message response confirming that the phone now has unlimited internet access for a specified time period. It would be nice if the phone could forward that reply from trackingSIM to mySIM so that I know the task is complete.

Now that the phone has internet access, I need to actually turn on the 3G radio and the GPS antenna (which should have previously been off to conserve battery) also via text message. Something like "GPS ON" and "3G ON" from mySIM to the trackingSIM would be great. And if the phone could reply with a confirmation text, that would be even better.

The last step would be to activate the tracking software. I need some kind of tracking software that would also activate via text message, and provide a confirmation text if possible.

Once the tracking software is activated, I need the following features:

Realtime tracking via a website. If it can work well on a mobile website as well (like an iPhone's Safari or Chrome browser), even better

Complete tracking history. Even if the signal dies, I want to know their last known location. If they move during the night and I have to sleep, I don't want to lose any data because I was wasn't watching every single moment. I plan to take all this information to the local police, so I need as much data as possible.

Once I have located the thieves loation and brought the police in, I need to be able to find the phone and bag as quickly and easily as possible. I'd like to be able to bring the phone OUT of Silent Mode, again with a text message, and activate an alarm at the highest possible volume setting, again with a text message.

Optionally, once I have Internet access established on the phone, I could possibly accomplish some of these tasks through another form of remote access such as SSH.

Optionally, if I could also somehow initiate a telephone call with the phone once it has reached its "final" location, then I could use the phone as a microphone as well and potentially get more evidence regarding the thieves' names, intentions, or guilt. This would also need to occur in complete silence as I would not want the thieves to hear a ring or see any flashing lights or lit up screen. Somehow I would need the phone to automatically answer a phone call that met some predetermined signal.

Optionally, it would also be nice to be able to initiate a voice recording remotely for the same reasons as 6. A voice recording might be easier to initiate and would probably have better audio quality (but would only be useful after the phone was recovered, whereas 6. could aid in the actual recovery).