Does 'Find My Phone' need an internet connection?

[Stampyhead]

I am in Venice this weekend and I thought it would be fun for my wife to be able to use Find my Phone to see where I am in the city at any given time (she's from Italy). However, since I've been here she says my phone has been unavailable, except for when I'm at the hotel in the evening. The hotel has wifi, so I'm assuming that she was able to see my location then because my phone was online then (obviously I have data roaming turned off the rest of the time). Does this mean that Find my Phone needs the phone it's searching for to have an internet connection of some sort in order to be found? I was under the impression that it just used the phone's GPS, which doesn't need an internet connection. Does anyone have any experience or further enlightenment on this?

 

[saving107]

Yes, data connection required.

Instead of Find My iPhone, try using Find My Friends.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

It doesn't need data to find itself, but it does need data to report that position back to your wife...

 

[Stampyhead]

Interesting. Thanks for the info. So would Find my Friends work without an internet connection?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Interesting. Thanks for the info. So would Find my Friends work without an internet connection?

No, both require data.

Find My Friends works between iPhones, so she would need to have an iPhone also for Find My Friends to work. Find My iPhone, of course, works from any web browser.