There is no denying that GPS is an incredibly fundamental tool for all types of phones, both smartphone and non-smartphone. GPS can help prevent you from getting lost, it can provide you with nearby location information and most importantly, GPS can also help you to locate your phone for you in the event of it ever becoming lost or stolen. You can quickly and easily enable GPS tracking on your smartphone, regardless if is Android, Windows Phone or Apple. If your phone is neither of these brands but features a GPS receiver the good news is that it can still be tracked via your home computer.
For both Android and Apple smartphone devices, you will be required to perform some preliminary setup in order to effectively use your phone’s GPS tracking feature. This will include:
- With an Android device, you will need to install the ‘Where’s My Droid’ application. This can be done from Google Play. The application will need to be manually configured for your device.
- With an Apple device, all you need to do is simply link your device to your own personal iCloud account.
Whether your device has simply been misplaced, lost or even stolen, you can quickly and easily track your mobile device remotely from the comfort of your own personal computer. It’s important that you don’t wait around until the very day that you misplace or lose your mobile phone device to think about this. Tracking features for your mobile device need to be enabled ahead before it happens!
Android Phones.
- Step 1 – You will need to send a text message to another phone, perhaps a friend or family members phone would be best. This text message should include the keyword that will be responsible for triggering the GPS trace. If you have not yet configured the ‘Where’s My Droid’ application in order to use a different GPS tracking keyword, the application’s default keyword is ‘wmd GPS’.
- Step 2 -You will need to wait to receive up to three or four messages which will inform and confirm that your mobile device has received the message and is receiving the GPS coordinates. Once your mobile device discovers its location, you will then receive a final text message which will include its longitude and latitude coordinates.
- Step 3 – You will need to enter these coordinates into a map program which is capable of reading GPS coordinates, such as Google Maps, on your personal computer or laptop device.
Apple Devices.
- Step 1 – You will need to use your Apple ID and password in order to log in to iCloud personal account. In your account, you will discover ‘My iPhone Web page’. Simply click on the ‘Devices’ link which can be found in the upper top-left corner, and select the lost device. The dot which can be seen to the left of the device is there in order to indicate the connection status of your device. Gray means offline, green means online.
- Step 2 – You will need to wait until your device’s exact location is shown on the map. You will only see the location if your mobile device is online.
- Step 3 – It’s recommended that you refresh the web page in order to establish an accurate location of your device or to see if your mobile device is moving before you decide to attempt on retrieving it.
Windows Phone 7 & 8.
- Step 1 – You will need to navigate to the Windows Phone homepage. Simply hover your cursor over the ‘My Phone’ drop-down menu, then click ‘Sign in’. Simply sign in with your personal Windows Live ID and password.
- Step 2 – Select ‘Find My Phone’ from the ‘My Phone menu’, before following the instructions which are provided in the dialog box.
- Step 3 – It’s recommended that you refresh the web page in order to establish an accurate location of your device. If desired, you can even print out a copy of your mobile device’s location before heading out to retrieve it.
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