After a contentious year of debate over whether and how to implement smartphone "kill switches" -- applications that allow users to disable their lost or stolen devices remotely -- it looks like most smartphones will come with that option in an attempt to deter smartphone theft. Here's good news from Apple: They work.

Apple was ahead of the pack in making kill switches standard on its devices, after unveiling the Activation Lock feature last year as part of the new line of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c. Activation Lock allows users to secure their devices from afar -- even if the phone was stolen -- by locking and even disabling the phone remotely, making the device useless in the hands of a thief.

In making the locking app standard, kill switch advocates argue, Apple created a lingering disincentive for iPhone theft -- a phenomenon that has been reaching epidemic proportions in the past few years. Activation Lock, and all "kill switch" apps, make devices less appealing to thieves because successful resale is pretty much out of the question, or at least it's a roll of the dice as to whether the thief can turn the phone around before its user becomes aware that he or she can essentially brick the phone at any time.

Kill switch advocates will be happy to hear that, according to The New York Times, Apple's Activation Lock seems to have had a real effect on iPhone thefts and robberies. Taking data since the Apple anti-theft feature became standard and comparing it to theft data in the half-year before Apple released Activation Lock, San Francisco police found iPhone robberies had dropped 38 percent. The Times report found that in London, thefts dropped almost one-quarter. Thefts in New York had dropped 29 percent and robberies 19 percent in the same period.

At the same time, thefts of Samsung devices, most of which do not come with a standard kill switch option, rose by over 50 percent over the past five months, compared to a year prior.

Law enforcement officials, especially San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, have been pushing for legislation to make kill switches standard on all new smartphones sold in their respective states. But for a time, they ran into pushback from the CTIA, the trade association of U.S. wireless carriers.

The CTIA argued that kill switches posed serious risks to users, as disabled devices can't make emergency phone calls, as well as financial downsides, since using the kill switch could force users, who might have only temporarily misplaced their smartphones, to buy a new phone after they had completely disabled the device. The trade association also cited the possibility of hackers taking advantage of kill switches, which happened to many iPhone and iPad users in Australia recently when a hacker "hijacked" their Activation Lock, demanding a ransom to unlock the devices.

But much of the pushback from the CTIA was thought to come from self-interest, as the threat of loss or theft of one's phone is an incentive to buy carrier-provided insurance, which is a big source of profits for the wireless industry.

Whatever the CTIA's motives, the group capitulated in April, announcing a voluntary commitment among Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, AT&T and Verizon (along with major smartphone manufacturers) to provide "a baseline anti-theft tool that is preloaded or downloaded on wireless smartphones" starting in the second half of next year. Soon most new smartphones will have kill switches, or at least the option to set one up, so maybe Android theft rates will start to look more like the downward-trending iPhone's soon.

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