Gadgetory

your heart beats a little bit faster trying to think about where your phone went but even then there's no pause for you until you're reunited with it a lot of people this point are already thinking about the worst-case scenario so what can you do if you find yourself in this predicament with your Android device well we recently checked out a couple of solutions so maybe there's still hope so as the thief one of the tests we did was that I took John's phone and walked a few blocks away without telling him where I was going and he had to find out where I went using just the apps he was able to get to my same block which is good but once he was there he had no idea where I was even with him pinging the phone and making it remotely rang our first course of action was to use Android device manager and lucky for us we had a second phone to help track it down so all you need to do is install the app and from there you can do with all the usual things you could locate it on the map lock the phone if you don't have a password on there already and even remotely wipe it as a worst case scenario another solutions to use a third-party anti-theft app which in our case we use Cerberus the nice thing about this one is that it's far more comprehensive in addition to what Android device manager offers we can use it to spy on our thief that means we can snap photos and videos using either the phone's cameras there's actually a one neat option with Cerberus you could actually send a message to your lost phone they'll display it on there and the neat thing about it too is that they'll actually read it out loud while it's wonderful to use the downside to Cerberus is that you'll need to install on the first day of using their phone and this brings us to its major flaw which is that unless you've done your research and had prior experience with losing your phone then this solution won't do a darn thing when it happens to you unexpectedly going back to Android device manager we soon realize that tracking down the phone in New York City wasn't going to be easy the app just couldn't trace the phone's last known GPS location however it seemed as though it finally pick it up once a thief started to move away from us and we notice that they went a block away from our position once we got close to the general vicinity of where the app was telling us the problem came across was that the location could have been in some building 50 floors up from the ground even ensure we can activate the phone to ring but when you're in a noisy spot like we were it's nearly impossible to hear at best both apps can only get you to the general location of your phone like an address and then you have to rely on making the phone ring remotely which if you're in the middle of a crowded city street in Manhattan or even if you're in a different building could be pretty useless I watched them look around for a full minute before just walking up to him and giving him back his phone which I doubt any thief is actually gonna do so even though both apps can be useful if you set it up correctly before you lose your phone you're still gonna need a good amount of luck to get it back so yeah we came to the realization that if you lose or have your Android phone stolen the transits are we tracking it down and subsequently finding it in a big city is pretty slim we know it sucks but we've already explained some of the logistical issues chances are - most people are carrying only a single phone so they don't have the luxury of tracking it down with another phone right away so where does that lead most people it means they'll need to access Android device manager or Cerberus through a PC again timing is crucial when it comes to successfully getting your phone but if you can't get to a computer in time your phone will be long gone that's a repair Android device manager is a great tool to use if you accidentally leave it at home or at a friend's house or even a place in general you can recall that's because you're not thinking worst case scenario just yet you can access Android device manager to reaffirm your speculate when your hunch is strongly telling you that you left it by accident at a place you can recall the confirmation you get from logging on to your account helps to eliminate further worry the best advice that we can give you about all of this is to go ahead and set up a password of some kind when you first set up your smartphone fingerprint verification is ideal but regardless any lock is better than none a thief can't attempt enter your password but after so many failed attempts usually 10 Android by default can be set to the phone and when they go through the initial setup process it asks for the password of the previous account on there so if you don't want to lose your phone for good you should probably take pre-emptive action now that means downloading all the right apps and going through all the settings because trying to find a phone with no previous set up is pretty much impossible the two app super testing where Android device manager and cerebrese which both worked but we're pretty glitchy and they both only show your phone as a blue dot on a map which John and I realized was gonna be an issue when we saw that we were standing in the middle of Manhattan and like we said it's best to have some sort of password protection on your phone because that folks is the first line of defense it can save you from intruders trying to do more than just steal your phone so there you go guys that was our experience trying to track down a lost phone in New York City if you guys want to learn more about any of the stuff we talked about in this video you can check out our website and read authority calm this is John VIII signing off