It often happens to lose your cell phone, not to know where it is even if it is at home, perhaps with the doubt of having left it somewhere. For this reason, among all the applications that can be installed on a smartphone, one really important is the one that allows you to locate the phone when it is lost, so you know where it is at any time . Since we are often curious, we may also want to use a different type of application that allows us to know where the phone of a friend or family member is. Both on Android and iPhone smartphones, you can use an integrated function to locate our phone quickly and some special applications that allow you to request the location of other people's smartphones .
How to locate lost phone
The quickest methods to locate lost phones involves the use of features already present on all modern smartphones, so you just need to know the credentials of our Google account or Apple ID to find our smartphone immediately.Alternatively we can request the location or monitor the movements of the phone with other location apps.
How to locate an Android smartphone
Who has an Android smartphone can activate the function that allows you to locate it in every place where it is left. As already explained, this is the Find my Android function, which does not require any installation and is located in the settings of each Samsung, Huawei, Honor, LG, Xiaomi phone etc.The location of Find My Android is not only useful if you leave your phone somewhere, to find it on the map precisely (for example if you leave it in the office or at a friend's house). The Find My Device function can be activated in the Settings> Security menu or, in some mobile phones, in the Settings> Google - Security menu.
At this point, every time you lose your phone, you can locate it exactly by going to the Android Find website or simply by searching on Google "Where is the mobile phone" .
This ability to search for the phone on Google only works if you are signed in to Google with the same account used on the Android phone to locate.
The page that Android finds allows you to ring your cell phone to find it at home, or to lock it or even reset it if you think it may have been stolen or lost without hopes of an easy and painless recovery.
If we are looking for a valid alternative to the integrated anti-theft system, we recommend you try the Prey Anti Theft app, available for free and which we talked about in depth in the Anti-theft guide for mobile phones that blocks, locates and deletes the mobile phone via SMS .
How to locate an iPhone
To have the location function of the lost iPhone simply activate the Find My iPhone or Where it is function (the latter is present on all models that support iOS 13 or later), which allows you to find your smartphone when it is connected to the Internet or view its last location before it went out or lost its connection.To configure this effective anti-theft system, simply open the smartphone, go to Settings> Apple Account, press on the item Where it is and then activate the check mark next to Find My iPhone .
To locate it, simply access the iCloud site with the Apple account used on the phone and then click the Find My iPhone icon. In addition to finding his position, you can also make him ring or activate the lost mode, locking the phone and letting him view details to let us contact whoever finds him. If we are unable to find our iPhone, it will also be possible to lock it and erase its memory, however preventing any possibility of loss of important information or access data to our sites, our apps and our credit cards.
Further details have been described in our guide on what to do in case of lost or stolen iPhone .
How to locate the cell phone of others
If you are curious about where a friend or girlfriend is or anyone else is, then there are other systems that we can use.The first feature is found on the Facebook app for Android and iPhone and is called Nearby Friends .
By opening the Facebook app on our mobile phone and displaying the side menu of options, we can start the Friends nearby function, which shows the generic location of friends in the city or province, so you can know briefly where they are or what they are doing; if a friend comes to us asking for help for the lost mobile phone, we can also use this function to understand where he was lost and what to do to recover it quickly.
Another function similar to that seen on Facebook is offered by WhatsApp, the famous messaging app available for Android and iOS.
By opening our friend's chat we can immediately monitor his movements and the last useful position of the phone, but only if he has previously activated Position in real time . If we do not know how to do it or the friend asks for our help, just tell him that it is enough to open the chat you have in common, press down on the paperclip symbol, then on the Position menu, so you can immediately send the position in time real.
For further information, please read our guide How to know where a person is .
Conclusions
The procedures described will allow you to immediately track down the lost phone, without having to install anything in particular on our device; if we use WhatsApp we can also benefit from the position in real time, useful in case we want to be followed by friends.To find out all the methods to track a lost or stolen smartphone, just read our guide on All the ways to track the phone .
If you want to have a more powerful function to find your cell phone, we have seen in another article how to make the cell phone ring even if it is silent or does not take, using some special applications.
