Lost iPhone 5 - Dublin. Help

Danye

Hi,

I was out Sunday night / early Monday morning and lost my iPhone 5. I'm not sure if I lost it in the back of the taxi or if it fell out of my pocket. As soon as I noticed it was gone I rang it several times and it just rang out. I tried it again and it was off. I'm not sure if it died or if it was turned off.

I went on to iCloud to use the "Find my phone" app. It's telling me that the phone is offline. I've been researching the app and it seems that although the phone is off I should still be able to see a location of the phone for the previous 24 hours. There is no map though!

Can anybody tell me what's wrong with that or if there's anything I can do?

Thanks.

makoten

I'm pretty sure Find My iPhone only works when the phone is on, with location services and mobile data/Wi-Fi also on, and it only shows the current location. Either the phone ran out of battery, or someone turned it off. The app is limited in its usefulness, you also can't get it to take photos using the front/rear cameras to see where it is.

whiterebel

Danye wrote: »

Hi,

I was out Sunday night / early Monday morning and lost my iPhone 5. I'm not sure if I lost it in the back of the taxi or if it fell out of my pocket. As soon as I noticed it was gone I rang it several times and it just rang out. I tried it again and it was off. I'm not sure if it died or if it was turned off.

I went on to iCloud to use the "Find my phone" app. It's telling me that the phone is offline. I've been researching the app and it seems that although the phone is off I should still be able to see a location of the phone for the previous 24 hours. There is no map though!

Can anybody tell me what's wrong with that or if there's anything I can do?

Thanks.

It doesn't work that way. You only see it when it is switched on.

FourFourRED

For this kind of scenario I would propose a feature of iOS 8 to prevent someone from turning off an iPhone when it's locked by a passcode/Touch ID. I can't seem to see any obvious downsides to it. Would allow phones with a data connection to be tracked by find my iPhone most of the time. Especially with the new security features where you can't restore without the Apple ID password as well.

Creamy Goodness

Aodhagan wrote: »

For this kind of scenario I would propose a feature of iOS 8 to prevent someone from turning off an iPhone when it's locked by a passcode/Touch ID. I can't seem to see any obvious downsides to it. Would allow phones with a data connection to be tracked by find my iPhone most of the time. Especially with the new security features where you can't restore without the Apple ID password as well.

I just assume the battery went dead rather than someone turning it off. Find my iPhone is kinda useless when it's ultimately dictated by the amount of battery you have (obviously it needs batty just if you're battery only lasts a day). It demotes Find my iOS device to little more than a glorified keychain that emits a beep for finding your car keys.

Even if you prevented someone turning it off, you still have a finite window to get to your pc/other iOS device to send a message, vibrate, wipe the phone.

I do think Apple are making leaps and bounds in this sort of stuff and it seriously makes me feel quite safe with my phone, it will be interesting to see if they keep up the pace with it come iOS 8.

FourFourRED

Creamy Goodness wrote: »

I just assume the battery went dead rather than someone turning it off. Find my iPhone is kinda useless when it's ultimately dictated by the amount of battery you have (obviously it needs batty just if you're battery only lasts a day). It demotes Find my iOS device to little more than a glorified keychain that emits a beep for finding your car keys.

Even if you prevented someone turning it off, you still have a finite window to get to your pc/other iOS device to send a message, vibrate, wipe the phone.

I do think Apple are making leaps and bounds in this sort of stuff and it seriously makes me feel quite safe with my phone, it will be interesting to see if they keep up the pace with it come iOS 8.

Well we don't know for sure what happened in his case but for cases where a thief takes a phone and turns it off straight away so it can't be tracked whilst also looking to sell it off then the ability to prevent him turning if off and increasing the chance of being able to track it, surely would be a good thing.

shanewalsh121

Aodhagan wrote: »

For this kind of scenario I would propose a feature of iOS 8 to prevent someone from turning off an iPhone when it's locked by a passcode/Touch ID. I can't seem to see any obvious downsides to it. Would allow phones with a data connection to be tracked by find my iPhone most of the time. Especially with the new security features where you can't restore without the Apple ID password as well.

Good idea but the only downside to this is that the phone will always have a hard reset or hard power down due to if your phone freezes and you need to reboot it. So due to it having a hard reset it would make not being able to normal power down at the lock screen pointless as all the "Thief" would have to do is hold the power and home button together.

FourFourRED

shanewalsh121 wrote: »

Good idea but the only downside to this is that the phone will always have a hard reset or hard power down due to if your phone freezes and you need to reboot it. So due to it having a hard reset it would make not being able to normal power down at the lock screen pointless as all the "Thief" would have to do is hold the power and home button together.

What I meant to say was that you could turn if off the usual way once you bypassed the passcode / Touch ID. The thief doing a hard reset would be restarting the phone, not being able to have it permanently off.

makoten

There are actually jailbreak tweaks like iCaughtU Pro which prevents the phone from being turned off manually. It offers so much more functionality than the simple Find My iPhone app.

Lost your phone and didn't have location services or data turned on? No problem, just send a message to your phone to activate them, and get the location as well as photos from both your rear/front cameras sent to your email. If someone tries to enter the PIN incorrectly a few times, his/her mugshot is also automatically sent to your email. Incredibly handy tweak, too bad Apple will never implement these features.

naasrd

If and when it's powered on and connected to the web you should be able to see where it is. Keep checking Find My Phone.

Dudda

If the phone is off (turned off or dead battery) and you have as SIM card pin then it won't connect to your data and be able to report the location when its powered back up and turned on.

That's presuming the SIM card wasn't removed in which case it's unlikely to ever to be returned.

CathalDublin

While its unlikely you will get it back, Do not delete that phone from your iCloud account, Since ios7 as long as its attached nobody can activate it and its essentially useless to anyone else, you can send it a message and if someone is trying to activate it they will see that message