Samsung ‘Find My Mobile’ Can Now Locate Phone when Offline

Losing your phone can be a nightmare, but thankfully there are some great tools to help recover it. Samsung has offered a “Find my Mobile” app for a while now, and this week, it’s picking up the handy new ability to track down a lost phone even if it’s offline.

In an update rolling out now, Samsung is enabling the ability to locate your phone (and, subsequently, watches or earbuds) when they lack an active connection to the internet. How? When this feature is enabled, Samsung says other nearby Galaxy devices with the same feature enabled will “scan” for others that allows each phone to report on another’s location when lost.

This change arrives in version 7.1.08.0 of the Find my Mobile app that is currently rolling out. It’s not enabled by default, but Samsung is sending push notifications to Galaxy owners to inform them of the option, as friend-of-the-site Max Weinbach spotted.

Looks like Samsung just added offline finding to Samsung's Find My Mobile.

Let's you track your phone even if it doesn't have WiFi or cellular by using other Galaxy users. pic.twitter.com/psLl1rcb4X

— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) August 22, 2020

For Samsung Galaxy owners, this is certainly a helpful option. An active internet connection — such as what’s used in Google’s “Find my Device” app and also utilized in the Samsung “Find my Mobile” app — may still be able to more reliably find your device, but for tablets especially, I could imagine this new offline option being an absolute life-saver.

August 25, 2020