How To Find Lost Or Stolen Android Phone



Smartphone are a part of us now, we have everything stored in it including all our personal details to our official data. Thereby losing our smartphones would be the worst nightmare ever we could have. That is why the operating systems comes along with so many security features included from which leads to the ability to have the data secured and at the same time it also has the features to find the phone’s location when you misplace it or lose it somewhere. That is why having the tracking system of our smartphone settings activated is very important.

Even without your conscious you might keep your phone somewhere and start searching for it. Even if it’s around your house or room and you still can’t figure it out where, then you will need the help of the android’s inbuilt system of helping you out. In that case you have the ability to get to your laptop and go to the find my phone app and literally give a ring or find the location from it. Most importantly just as how you have to have your phone set up earlier with the tracking system, you should also have the imei number and the android’s serial number noted.


Only so if you are unable to find the phone by yourself, you can lodge a complaint in the police station and for that you will need both the imei and serial numbers. Imei number is a unique identifier, which the phone uses to register to the cell towers. You can easily find your imei number by dialing *#06# in your mobile. You will also have these numbers on your phone box.

To find your serial number go to ‘settings’ > ‘about phone’ and you will find it there.

To get your phone tracked you will also need the help of other apps or browsers. If you aren’t aware of how to do it and wants to be prepared for any such situations, then no worries. Today in this guide I am going to provide you all with a few methods that can be followed when you miss or lose your phone, even if it is stolen, you can try and figure out the location and find it. So come let us take a look at them in brief.

How To Find Lost Android Phone

Locate Your Phone Using Google

In your android smartphone, the google in it had the inbuilt ability to help figure out the location of your phone. When you set up your phone, eventually you will be signed into the ‘Find my device’.

If incase you don’t find it automatically did this procedure, then simply go to the playstore and get the ‘Find my device’ app installed and then sign in with your google account. And afterwards, it will stay active the rest of the time and using this you can fond your phone when lost.

To find the lost android, you have to login to your google account from another phone or laptop and in a web browser type in ‘android.com/find’, then you have to enter your email id and password if you have not signed into that account from the particular device.



In the find my device, you have three options to choose.


Play a sound: Through this option you can play a sound and make a noise in your lost android, if you think your phone is hiding somewhere around. This will work even if the phone is in silent mode.

Secure your device: If incase you believe your phone is stolen and you haven’t activated any security system such as passwords or passcode, the you can do it through this which will make the finder not access your homescreen.



Erase: This option will allow you to erase all the data manually from the find my device app.



If you can’t figure out the location of the phone using this app, then mostly your device doesn’t have available network or wifi isn’t connected. So keep trying, when the phone gets the network it will be visible on the map.

Locate The Phone In Your House Using Google Home

The worst thing to happen on a busy day is losing the phone somewhere around your house. It can be either inside the sofa edges. Under you pillow cases or anywhere in the kitchen but when you start looking for it will not be visible. So in that case you can find it easily if you have a Google home speaker, from which the google assistant would help you find it.


The speaker would help if you have logged both the speaker and the phone using the same google account and linked your google account and voice to your google home through the home app. So if your phone has the internet connection and find my phone is turned on then all you have to say is ‘ok google, find my phone’ and it will turn on the ringer in your phone even if it is on silent mode. Simple as that.

Using Google Photos

We all know about the google photos app as an application that would allow us to sync in photos and other medias and store as much as we want in it but have you ever heard of how it can help you find your lost phone?

In case that you have miss placed your phone and think that it is stolen, then you van get the help of the google photos as it can help you with the feature backup and sync option. How it works is, when you have activated the sync option in the Google photos then what ever photos that is taken from the phone will be automatically uploaded the google photos account and the best part is that along with the image the location from where the picture was captured will also be uploaded. So in that way, you can login to your google account in another device and watch out for new images popping up. For this to work in your phone the internet connection should be connected and the backup and sync should be enabled. So in case you find new photos uploaded in the google photos, you have to, 

  • visit the photos.google.com and login to the same google account that you have logged into in the lost phone.
  • Look if any new images has been uploaded afterwards. 
  • If so, click on the image and select the info icon which is on the top right corner of the screen.
  • In that appearing sidebar, you will be able to see the image’s information along with the location from where it was clicked from.


Alternative Third Party Apps

Well, apart from the google’s inbuilt features, you can also use some of the third party apps that are available in the google play for you to install. It will also help you find where your phone is by locating its location or in other possible ways. So let us see some alternative apps that can be used to find your lost android smartphone.

Life360 family locator: This is an app that uses the GPS tracker to find your phone. The best feature of this app is that it can be used by the whole family with multiple phones where you become a circle. The app forms a group with whom you wish to have your phones tracked in real time. So with this option you can always check where the other members are and see the location. You can chat or even broadcast a meeting time and location with the circle members that you have connected with.


So with that feature if you find your phone lost, then you can locate it through others phones and track it on the map.

Prey anti theft: This prey anti theft will help you have three different devices protected through just one app. With this app you can raise an alarm in your phone when you think it is lost, take screenshots when it is in use and also you can simply lock down the device.




It is a free app with some great features, when you download it to your android phone, it will provide you some tutorials to show how to run the device. It is simple and useful.

Lost android: This app will allow you to have remote access to the lost phone through the website that you login. Thereby you will be able to delete all the sensitive information from your phone when you think it is lost or even send messages to the phone.

The best part is, you can also forward any calls or messages to another number and have a record of any calls, messages or even the photos taken from your lost phone.

Frequently Asked Questions And Answers

1. Can I still find my lost phone if it’s turned off/ in airplane mode/ the battery is dead.

This is a very common question asked by many and you have to know that to find out the location of where is phone is, it should be turned on and have an active internet connection. If not for them then there very less possibility to find out. You can also try using the phone’s location history to check where the phone was last found before the connection got lost. But even for this, the location history should have been activated.

2. I changed my Google account password, can i still locate my phone?


Well, changing the password of the accounts when you find out that the phone is lost is a good thing to do, as we will not want a stranger to peep into our accounts. And you will still be able to locate and will nit lose the ability to track the device.

3. Can I track my lost phone, if someone made a factory reset?

Well, in this case we will not be able to do so, as factory reset indicates that the phone removes or erases everything and brings it to the factory settings. So the connection to the google accounts won’t be there any longer.

So that’s it, we have now checked on a few methods that can be used to find the android smartphones that seems to be lost or missing. You can follow any of the possible ways and get your phone located, which will help the best to get the phone back to you. So I hope this guide would have helped you in a great way to be precaution before facing any such crisis.
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