How to Locate a Lost Android Phone?

Locate a Lost Android Phone

Have you ever lost an Android phone? Well, nobody wants to be in that situation because smartphones contain detailed information on our lives. Someone who stumbles onto your phone can access your social media profiles, images, and contact information. To make matters worse, most people don’t secure their smartphones. A study by Pew Research shows that 28% of users don’t have any security features to lock their phones. So what happens if you lose your Android phone? All your information is exposed. However, fortunately, there are some things you can do to locate lost Android phone as soon as you lose it.

Let us go ahead and read about them in the subsequent sections.

Locating lost Android phone with the help of Google's Find My Device

Find My Device is an app developed by Google to protect your missing smartphone. The app tracks important information like real-time location, connected Wi-Fi network, downloaded apps and more. ‘Find My Device’ is under Google Play Protect, a suite of services designed to protect missing Android phones. The app is widely regarded as one of the best apps to find lost Android phone. Of course, before you find a lost Android phone, you need to download and install ‘Find My Device’ (which was previously known as Android Device Manager)

Step 1 - Open Google Play Store and search for ‘Find My Device’.

Step 2 – Tap on the three dots, and select ‘Install’.

Once you are done with the installation, sign up there.

Step 3 – Open the app.

Step 4- Select the Gmail account you want to use the service.

Step 5 – Press ‘Continue’ and enter the password when prompted.

How to Locate Lost Android

Step 6 – Select ‘Sign in’ and allow location tracking.

Locate Lost Android

The location service needs to be enabled and make sure that in advance. The best way to do that is by going to Settings > Location > Enable Location Services.

But what steps do you follow to recover your missing phone?

Step 1 - Visit the ‘Find My Device’ website (https://www.google.com/android/find?u=0).

Step 2 - Sign in to your Google account (The account you used to register with Find My Device).

Steps to Locate Lost Android

Step 3 – Check if your device is visible, the location will be displayed on a map layout that resembles Google Maps.

Find My Lost Android

Step 4 – You have the option to play a loud sound from your phone. The loud sound will keep going until you find the phone and press the power button. Playing a loud sound is a great option if you are in the same location as the missing phone but can’t see it.

You won’t be able to retrieve your missing phone after locating Android phone. Whether it's on a trip or at a party, your phone is a long distance away from your current location. In such cases, it might take a few days for you to recover the phone, but until then your information is exposed. 'Find My Device' presents a solution to the problem: Lock. You can remotely lock your missing phone by implementing a new password.

Step 1 - To lock the phone, track it on the ‘Find My Device’ website and select ‘Lock’.

Step 2 – Enter the phone number and a message. Press ‘Lock’ again.

How to Find My Lost Phone

Find My Device is great for smartphones, however, it does not provide everything you want from a tracking app. Besides real-time location, Find My Device fails to offer other tracking features. If your smartphone goes missing, there is no way to know if your phone is being used without your consent.

Use Google 'Timeline' to track your lost Android phone

While ‘Find My Device’ is the best option, there are alternatives for those who want to expand their options. Hence, we introduce Google Timeline. If you are not aware, Google Timeline is a nifty feature to browse locations you have visited in the past. It started as a small feature of Google Maps, which allowed you to collect photos of the places you visited. Timeline became popular and Google expanded its functionality until Google Maps is renamed Google Maps Timeline. While Google Maps Timeline is great for creating photo collages, it can also be used to locate lost Android phone. All you need to do is take a look at your location history on Google Timeline to get an idea of where your missing phone is.

Step 1 - Visit the Google Maps website. Login with the Gmail account linked to your missing smartphone.

Step 2 - Click on the icon with the three horizontal bars. The icon should be at the top right corner.

Step 3 - Select ‘Timeline’.

TimeLine to Locate Lost Android

Step 4 - Enter the time: Month, Year, and the day you last saw your smartphone.

How to Locate My Lost Android

Step 5 –You will now see the location history of the device, along with its current location.

However, one disadvantage of this method is location tracking.

Google Timelines will not work unless you have location tracking enabled. Some smartphone owners are not comfortable with their location constantly being tracked and opt to turn it off. If you prefer to keep location tracking off, then Google Timeline is not particularly helpful for you.
Furthermore, Google Timelines does not give you a precise location to locate Android phone. You have to visit the location and find it manually (or hope someone found it and is keeping it safe).
It is important to note that Google Timeline is not a smartphone tracking software. Google Timelines was designed to help people capture memories in photos. Therefore, the app is not going to have any useful features for tracking your smartphone should it go missing. You will not be able to track keystrokes, phone calls made or text messages sent.

While Google Timelines is a viable option, it is not the best one available.

Get the help of Third Party tools to track Lost Android Phone

We have talked extensively talked about Google tools to find lost Android phone but there are other third-party tools for this very purpose: mSpy Phone Tracker, FlexiSpy Phone Tracker and Find my mobile.

mSpy Phone Tracker

mSpy Phone Tracker is a comprehensive tracking software used to monitor the real-time location and smartphone activity. You can track messages sent and received, social media activity, view images stored on phone and much more. mSpy Phone Tracker can be used find smartphones due to its GPS tracking capabilities. Unlike ‘Find My Device’ and Google Timelines, mSpy Phone Tracker was designed from the ground up to be a tracking app. Therefore, you are going to access features and capabilities not found anywhere else.

Using mSpy Phone Tracker is a relatively simple process that consists of the following steps:

Step 1 - Login to your dashboard using the email address you gave upon registration.

Step 2 - Navigate the list of features until you see ‘Location’ and select it.

Step 3 - You should get the current location of your smartphone along with a history of previous time and places.

The advantage of using mSpy Phone Tracker to locate lost Android phone is due to its wealth of features available. If you use mSpy Phone Tracker you get much more than just location tracking. Unlike ‘Find My Device’, mSpy Phone Tracker offers a wealth of information like social media activity, keystrokes, and messages sent. The software will inform you immediately if it’s being used without your permission. Hence, you can take further action like inform your mobile carrier. mSpy Phone Tracker comes with Geo-fencing capability, so you know when your smartphone has left your set geographical boundary. However, free use of the mSpy Phone Tracker app is limited.

Locate My Lost Android Phone

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FlexiSpy Phone Tracker

FlexiSpy Phone Tracker is a web-based app for parents who need to control their children’s online activity. The app has several features geared toward tracking and monitoring smartphone activity. Parents can monitor location history, Track real-time location, Get reports on children’s activities, Monitor app usage, Block websites etc.

You can use FlexiSpy Phone Tracker to track a missing smartphone.

To locate the lost Android device, log in to the account and visit the dashboard. From there you can choose either “Live Location” option to track the current location of the device. Or Go with location history to check the previous history or location of the lost device.

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Find My Mobile

It is a website from Samsung for owners who lost their Android smartphone. You can use ‘Find My Mobile’ website to find missing smartphones, backup data, lock screens and even block Samsung pay. To locate Android phone using ‘Find My Mobile’ website follow the steps outlined below.

Step 1 – Go to the Find My Mobile website. Sign into your account.

Step 2 – You should see your device’s location provided it is connected to the mobile network.

Locate My Lost Android

Attractive Features Made Available by mSpy Phone Tracker

mSpy Phone Tracker comes packed with 150+ features among which the phone spying is the most impressive one. Spy on all messages, calls and multimedia exchanged through WhatsApp and other IM apps including iMessage, Instagram, Facebook, Line, Skype, Kik, Wechat and Viber. Get instant updates of messages along with date, time and sender information. Here is a list of some other features that are certainly going to win your heart -

Spy photos: Images, Audio files and other multimedia files are a great way to track the cell phone of any android user. mSpy Phone Tracker gives you access to all of the mentioned bouquet of features with the click of one button.

Skype Messenger Spy: The process to monitor all Skype conversations including multimedia files transferred over the devices got way simpler with mSpy Phone Tracker.

WhatsApp Messenger Spy: With WhatsApp spy you can easily access all text messages and multimedia messages like videos, images, voice recordings that have been exchanged through WhatsApp messenger.

Hike Messenger Tracking: A popular social media app Hike is available to users globally. This app can be used for sharing texts and photos. mSpy Phone Tracker App can be used to spy all Hike chats.

GPS Tracker: mSpy Phone Tracker informs you about the live location of the target android smartphone.

E-mail Spying: Yahoo Mail, Outlook Mail and Gmail are the most popular ways of doing formal communication. People use these email services to share various kinds of emails including spams. You can keep your family secure with the help of mSpy mobile spy app to keep yourself away from all threats. Employers can install mSpy Phone Tracker to their employees mobile to monitor their email conversations, while the parents can install the iPhone parental monitoring app to their kids android device to keep an eye on the emails shared by them.

We should all try and secure our smartphones at all times. However, it pays to have some method to find lost Android phone, in the event, you lose it. We provided four different ways to track your missing smartphone. The first three options were software-based while the final option is a smartphone tracking device. The one which is my favourite is mSpy Phone Tracker, the best free parental control app for Android, that is capable of assisting you most while locating with lost Android phone.

We wish you all the best.

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The Best Android Phone Tracker of 2021

Locate a Lost Android Phone

Locating lost Android phone with the help of Google's Find My Device

Use Google 'Timeline' to track your lost Android phone

Get the help of Third Party tools to track Lost Android Phone

Attractive Features Made Available by mSpy Phone Tracker

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