Misplacing your smartphone around your house, in the car or around your work place is common. Absent minded people do that all the time, and if you are constantly busy with chores around you, you are sure to lose it pretty often. If you are using an Android smartphone, your job of hunting down that smartphone can get as simple as one click (to be precise).
Take a scenario where you misplaced your smartphone in your large home. You don’t know where you kept it last—bedroom, hall, dining room, kitchen, or possibly in your restroom, or even under those sofa coushins or pillows, or maybe your dog is playing with it. And hunting it when the phone is set to silent mode is even worse as you could ask someone to call you and it would ring, helping you to locate it.
Google comes to the quick rescue. Well, the feature isn’t new, but has just become easier than before. So even if your Android smartphone is on silent, worry not—hunting it from Google will make it ring to the loudest, for a whole five minutes, till you locate it.
Simply head to your desktop, laptop, tablet or another smartphone and open the Google search page. Login with your username and password (that is registered with the phone you are trying to locate). Now in the search field, type ‘Find my phone’. A map will open up, showing you the location of your smartphone. Below the map is a small smartphone icon with ‘Ring’ written next to it. Click it and your smartphone will start ringing for five minutes at the loudest volume possible. Simply head to the direction from where the rings are heard and voila! You have located your smartphone. Hit the power button once and your smartphone will stop ringing.
Now here is a catch—Google cannot find your smartphone if your smartphone is not active with an internet connection or if your smartphone is switched off. If the GPS is enabled, you can locate the smartphone on the map. If not, you can still make it ring. Only make sure you have the ‘Android Device Manager’ app updated on your smartphone.
Here is a tip: using the same feature, you can also lock your smartphone or even erase the entire data from it, in case you have lost it or if it is stolen.
