Category Archives: General

Can We Track Cell Phones on Airplanes?

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As the search still continues for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 plane, the exact location of the plane is still shrouded in mystery. There are some family who try to contact their loved ones who boarded the plane by cellphone. Some said that they heard the phones ringing but there is no answer. However, as explained some of the experts, a ringing does not indicate that the phone necessarily can be contactable and traceable.

So, the question that we want to raise here is that can we actually track the plane by locating their phones through the GPS technology. Based on some reports, the family of the loved ones actually requested China Mobile, China biggest telecom operator to track the phones of the passenger of the missing Malaysia Airlines.

However, based on official reports, they could not detect their phones. Please note that the technology often used in tracking phones are based on GPS technology. Even most of the apps in the market that can used to track phones utilized this technology. So, with this technology it brings the limitation in which it could not be detected once it is above 10,000 meter in the air or deep down in the ocean. And also, the telecom operators can only track the phones only if the phones are connected to their network.

So, usually there is no coverage above 10,000 meters in the air. But how about the Wi-Fi provided by the plane? Can it be used to track the phones if the phones are connected to the wireless internet connection? This is possible as long as the plane did not crashed or in the deep ocean. But, normally long haul flight such as MH370 does not have Wi-Fi services onboard. This is due to the reason that the Wi-Fi services onboard still depended heavily on cellular towers on the ground.

So, when the planes cross the ocean, there is no connection to the internet as there is no cell towers to be connected. However, all prayers to missing passengers of MH370 and hope they will be found safe and sound.


Cellphone as Small Tracking Devices

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If you are a fan of spy movies, you will notice how the spies used very small tracking devices to track bad guys. In current reality however, most methods of tracking devices really depends on GPS technology. With the advance state of smartphones nowadays, you now can convert your cellphone into a homing device.

Many smartphones today not just comes in big size but also some of it is produced in small compact size. Some of the examples of smartphones that are small are Sony Xperia mini, Samsung Galaxy mini 2 (108.99mm x 58.6mm x 12.3 mm), LG Optimus L3 (102.6mm x 61.6mm x 11.85mm) and HTC Explorer (102.8mm x 57.2mm x 12.9mm), to name a few.

These smartphones are small enough but still have certain smartphones function as they are powered by Android. Therefore you can leverage these small size smartphones as small tracking devices for tracking your family or friends. The next thing is to download an app that can track your phone accurately. One of my suggestions is the Seekdroid app. It cost around $4.99. Seekdroid has the feature of using a website to track your phone.

Once you installed it, you need to sign up for the Seekdroid website where it requires you to have a username and password. Make sure you do not lose the username and password. However, there are still many free apps that can detect your phone that you can install. Google Map app can also be used as it utilized the GPS of your phone.

After that, all you need to do is put this small smartphones inside a bag or any place hidden. Make sure you put it in silence mode and keep recharging it once a month depending on the phone battery that you used. And there you have it, a cheap alternative of a small tracking devise system that you can do it by yourself.

Can You Track a Non Smartphone?

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One of the advantages of smartphones is the GPS function embedded in the phones that enables apps to utilize this function for any location based activities. These include GPS mapping apps such as the popular Waze, Papago, Foursquare to name a few. There are also other apps that utilize this GPS embedded function to track the activities of the users such as apps for Jogging, running and other physical stuffs. With this function also, some apps can be used to track the phone once it got lost.

These apps include Find my iPhone, SeekDroid, Life360 Family Locator and others. In addition, some client software or apps can track the smartphones by allowing cell identification through signal strengths via nearby cell tower.

However, what if your lost phone is a non-smartphone? Would you be able to track a non-smartphone if it got lost? Based on current technology, the answer is no. Even with a cellphone number, normally it is quite hard to track it unless it is a number of a landline phone. There are a number of services in the internet that offers reverse phone lookup for a fee. This is where you give them the cellphone number and they will give you certain information with regards to the number but normally they will not be able to show the location of the phone’s number.

As such, the mobile phone can only be tracked if it is embedded with the GPS chip. Other option would be to contact the network operator to know the location of the cellphone number. This is due to the fact that the signal received by the phone is communicated through cell towers that are owned by the operator. However, again, network operator would not disclose this information unless it is required through a police search warrant or government’s request. So for a civilian to track their non-smartphone, it is nearly impossible.

However, smartphones now have become very cheap nowadays. With the GPS technology that are embedded in the smartphones, it might be wise to purchase a smartphone instead of a non-smartphone so that you can track it if you lost it somehow. Read here on our previous article on how you can track a lost phone using the applications in the smartphone.

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