My Experience With Microsoft’s ‘Find My Phone’
July 21, 2011 6 CommentsFor the most part yesterday was a very normal day, that is until I had to attend a mandatory meeting for my sons baseball team. I was there at the meeting while my husband was at work, so I was texting him all the information that they were giving us. I don’t really remember what I did with my phone after that.
A friend of mine was at the meeting with me and she ever so graciously offered me a ride home. As I was walking up to my front door I opened my purse to retrieve my keys and realized that I didn’t have my phone. I ran upstairs to call my friend but she wasn’t answering.
I was in a state of panic. I know that most times losing a cell phone means you will never get it back. Somehow despite the panic I had a moment of clarity. I remembered that Microsoft provides a service to track your cell phone if it is lost. I searched for the link and there it was, windowsphone.live.com.
The first thing I had to do was to login using my Windows Live ID. Once you are logged in, one of the first links that you see is “find my phone”. There you are given the options:
- map it
- ring it
- lock it
- erase it
The first thing I chose to do was map it. Unfortunately the result it gave me was the park that I was at just five minutes before for the meeting. Panic rose in me once again. I decided the best course of action would be to utilize the “lock it” option which lets you put a message on your locked screen. I basically put a message asking that my phone be returned and a phone number where I could be reached . Then I set out to the park once again to see if by some miracle my phone was there. A second or two after I left my husband called my son’s cell phone which I had taken from him to call my cell phone in case someone would answer and return it to me. He told me that my phone had changed locations. My heart dropped. I asked where the phone was and he told me the location before having the epiphany that the placement of my phone on the map is exactly where my friend lives. Her house was actually centered on the map.
Feeling relieved I got home and decided to call my buddy again hoping she would answer this time. She did. She checked her car and to no ones surprise thanks to the Windows Phone locator found my phone.
It took a few too many minutes to lock onto my phones location but that was most likely due to the fact that it wasn’t in a fixed location until my friend got home. Once it was able, it locked on so accurately that I knew exactly where my phone was even without verbal confirmation from my friend.
I am very thankful to Microsoft for this service. Even though my phone wasn’t really lost it made me feel at ease. Had my phone been lost and not returned to me at least I know that I wasn’t completely helpless in that situation. PlusI could’ve simply erased all my phone’s content right from my desktop.
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