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Mobileme - Find my iPhone questions

boss.king

boss.king

Suspended
Original poster
Apr 8, 2009
6,394
7,650
My friends iPhone got stolen the other day (no mobileme, he has accepted that he won't get it back and got a HTC Hero until iPhone 4 comes) and this made me think about investing in mobileme. I've searched here and on goolge and gotten most of my questions answered, but I still have a few things that i want to know.

1. Is it possible to find it after wiping remotely?
2. What would prevent mobileme from tracking it? (eg: turned off? SIM out? restored?) What sort of time frame does one get realistically to find the phone?
3. How accurate have you found it to be? I've heard people saying that it doesnt work very well indoors, which could really be a problem since i live in a city. Does it use GPS or cell towers?

Thanks, sorry if these are common questions but I couldnt find answers to them on here.
 
Thanks for the fast reply. I think i'll pass on mobileme because in the mentality of a thief, my first move would be to take thr sim out. If that disables mobileme then i dont think its really worth it. Just gonna have to be a bit more careful now
 
Tested Sim Out

boss.king said:
Thanks for the fast reply. I think i'll pass on mobileme because in the mentality of a thief, my first move would be to take thr sim out. If that disables mobileme then i dont think its really worth it. Just gonna have to be a bit more careful now
Click to expand...

I just tested MobileMe with the sim out and it found my iPhone with ease.
 
Oh, wow, i'll have to think this over again. Can you comment on its degree of accuracy? Like " its on this block" or "its 1 meter away"?
 
boss.king said:
Oh, wow, i'll have to think this over again. Can you comment on its degree of accuracy? Like " its on this block" or "its 1 meter away"?
Click to expand...

Depends on the accuracy of the GPS fix the device can get. There is no firm or fixed answer to this. If it was lying on the ground out in the open it should get down to a few meters. When I'm at work with terrible reception, no WiFi or GPS it's lucky to get the correct area of London!
 
I'm in rural Hampshire and MobileMe is telling me that my iPhone is in a ten miles radius. Very helpful, it only covers Alresford, half of Winchester and a few villages. It's lucky that I haven't lost the phone.

By the way, this feature was Flash even a couple of weeks ago! What a hypocrisy on Apple's part!
 
Thanks guys, this was really helpful. I think I'll have to pass on mobileme as it seems be a luck-of-the-draw type feature and I'm not exactly made of money. I'm pretty careful with my phone as it is, I was just hoping for this to be a foolproof safety method (I see I was rather naive). As for those of you who use it, I hope you get lucky with it when you need it :D
 
There's a free trial for 60 days for Mobile Me. Just sign up and check it all out for yourself. It will be easy to run experiments on each of your questions.

Mike
.
 
Find my iPhone would be useful if you just misplaced your iPhone and wanted to see about where it was -- but you wouldn't honestly use it to track down whoever stole your iPhone, would you? That's detective work. Probably dangerous anyway
:eek:
 
BacklitFirefly said:
Find my iPhone would be useful if you just misplaced your iPhone and wanted to see about where it was -- but you wouldn't honestly use it to track down whoever stole your iPhone, would you? That's detective work. Probably dangerous anyway
:eek:
Click to expand...

When you locate your stolen iPhone, that's when you call the authorities. Read it here a few times that's how some have gotten back their swiped iPhones.

Mike
 
boss.king said:
Oh, wow, i'll have to think this over again. Can you comment on its degree of accuracy? Like " its on this block" or "its 1 meter away"?
Click to expand...
Not so quick. Sim out = no 3G/Edge connection = lack of ability to communication with MobileMe.

The tester must had wifi enabled at home. Try turning wifi off and MobileMe won't be able to track you.
 
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