A True Story, brought to you by Find My iPhone and my occasionally forgetful teenage son.
My 15 yr old son has an iPhone.
The same phone that he used his Christmas and birthday money to buy about 7 months ago.
Firs you need to know this:
He doesn't have the best tract record with cell phones.
He's dropped one down the sewer.
He's gone swimming with one.
He's dropped one in the toilet.
But, after few years and some gained maturity and responsibility, and his own money,
and he's ready for a smartphone.
He's done a surprisingly great job of keeping up with it ...
until a few weeks ago.
He left his phone at our apartment complex pool.
Overnight.
And realized the next morning that it was missing.
So, he calls me at work.
In a panic.
Enter: Find My iPhone. (accessed through Apple's iCloud.)
This is so wonderfully cool.
With Find My iPhone, through GPS, you can see on a map
where your phone is currently located.
You can send a message and/or sound to it, remote lock it and/or remote wipe it.
The sound emits at full volume, even if your phone was on silent, for two minutes.
My son did this, with no luck.
So, when I got home from work, we went searching.
I downloaded the free Find My iPhone app, and then started searching for his phone.
The GPS showed his missing phone was still in our apartment complex,
but located near another building.
So, we went a-knocking.
We knocked on every single door in that building.
No one answered.
except one.
A teen boy was working with a crew putting in new carpet in an empty apartment ...
but he said hadn't seen the phone.
We were about to give up, when I decided we needed to access the Find My iPhone app again and have it send the noise ... and then we heard it.
A pinging.
From the bushes right by the apartment with the carpet installers.
We found the phone!
Someone had ditched it (probably freaked out by all the noises it was making and all the message we had sent). They'd stripped off his OtterBox Case, darn it.
Thank goodness for Find My iPhone!!
FYI, Find My iPhone must be enabled in the iCloud settings on your device for you to locate it with this app.
Because my with my son's track record, there's no way I was buying him a replacement.
(This post was not sponsored in any way by Apple or iPhone. It's a true story, and I'm SO thankful we were able to find the phone.)
4 comments:
That is fascinating. It's about freakin' time a tool came along to help people find their phones. I can go a whole day not being able to find mine, only to discover Gretchen has knocked it under the bed. Yay for you guys!!!
Apple's Find my Phone is great - but useless if the missing phone is out of power. Try the "Last Alert Pro" app.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/last-alert-pro/id510982156?mt=8
Find your iPhone -even after the battery dies!
Lose my cell all the time. Moreover, these days my baby takes it to the most unpredictable places to play.
What's awesome is you can use that same app on ipod touches also.
My girls misplace theirs around the house and it saves me from screaming and yelling at them quite a bit.
It comes with a price though. If Mama has to use the app to find the ipod - it's mine for a week. Mama's Rule.
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