Cellphone as Small Tracking Devices

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?

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.

(Disclaimer:- Some of the links inside this article is Affiliate links)

Tracking GSM Phone

Since all of the previous posts are about tracking phones using GPS, for today’s post we would like to explain on the methods in tracking GSM phones. First of all, what is a GSM? GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications.

It was a standard developed by the Europeans and it became the de facto global standard for mobile communications. One of the key features of GSM is the application of the SIM card. SIM stands for Subscriber Identity Module. It is a smart card that is attached inside your phone. The SIM acts a unique identity card for the user of the phone where it contains the user’s personal information and its subscription number to the network.

So, in terms of tracking a GSM phone, the SIM card plays a key role here. This is due to the fact that your phone will always be communicating with a nearby cell tower. And through that communication, the information inside your SIM is used as a means of communication. The data that is being transmitted to nearby cell tower will consists of your MNC or Mobile Network Code and also your phone’s manufacturer data such as the IMEI and also ICCID number. The tracking of your phone by the network tower is done through geo-location technique.

So by using the information provided by this radio network tower, you can actually determine the phone cell coordinate data from public portal such as the Google Maps. This is due to the fact that many smartphones are now using the Google Maps Mobile. Through this app, Google has been able to store billions of data from user’s smartphones across the world. Among information that was shared is the Mobile Network Code (MNC), Location Area Code (LAC) and also Cell ID. By using this data into Google Map, you will be able to track the phone to the nearest cell tower that is picking up this data. There are now many websites that offers this services that links it with Google Map.