can a mobile phones location still be tracked with battery dead

synchro

on the news tis morning, a reporter said the phone location was of tat young boy who was murdered was located even though the battery was dead
is tis possible?

Ste.phen

AFAIK, the best they can do is find the location that the phone was at when it was switched off / soon before the battery died.
The networks get location data periodically when the phone is idle, not just when you make a call or send a message. I think when the phone signs off from the network it synchs with the local base stations too?

JackieChan

Initially when the boy went missing it was reported that the phone operators(Esat) placed the phone close to his own house.
Since the phone was turned off, there would have been no response from the phone to paging requests from base station contollers(bsc).

All I can think of is that the killer turned his phone back on. not likely though.
Otherwise they are telling us duff information to cover something up.

aidan_walsh

The phone can be tracked, on or off, as long as the battery is alive, according to this morning's Morning Ireland.

bringitdown

Short answer: NO

Even when it is switched on the technology in Ireland is extremely inaccurate - uses a piece of equipment called an Mobile Location Center (MLC). It is done using cell ID and knowledge of the cell size.

So for example in Dublin cells are smaller to handle the number of handsets / people. A cell might roughy cover a 500m radius when you attach to that cell or handover to a new cell your current location (cell-id) is update in the MLC. You can be anywhere in there tho!

Move down the country and cells are much bigger so the (in)accuracy changes.

Power off and the network has no idea where you are. It knows where you last were but has absolutely no way of tracking you after.

More accurate technologies are available such as triangulation but I don't expect the operators here to invest in them given the luke warm reception to O2's LBS applications.

---

In the case of the young boy they would have had the last location before the phone died. The said the phone rang for some time before it died so the last location would have been known. That would give the GARDA a definite area in which to search. If the phone had moved away from the last cell they would not have located it.

dudara

A friend of mine worked for IT security in o2 at one stage. They can track phones, but they need legal permission to do so (AFAIK). Otherwise, all they know is what cell it is in.

As to when the phone is turned off, I don't know.

bringitdown

dudara wrote:

A friend of mine worked for IT security in o2 at one stage. They can track phones, but they need legal permission to do so (AFAIK). Otherwise, all they know is what cell it is in.

As to when the phone is turned off, I don't know.

That would suggest they manually triangulated it before it died. But don't discount the Gardai using mis-information to influence a would be kidnapper.

It is all moot anyway given the terrible tragedy.

JackieChan

cells in open areas like that would have a max range of about 5-6 miles.
Thats an area of 75-115 squared miles!

Red Alert

When it's turned off, the processor and tranmission system are halted. AFAIK there's no way in current systems to remotely reactivate a phone, as it would require big architectural changes to the micro-processors in the phones.