Google Search Engine Now Lets Users Find Their Lost Android Devices

Losing your smartphone or any mobile device is a pretty commonplace occurrence. After all, about 6 out of 10 Americans own a smartphone nowadays, and there's a good chance that in any given moment, there's some disgruntled user looking for his or her misplaced handset.

Good thing that Google has a new feature that can help you when you lose your smartphone. The search giant recently announced a new tool in its search engine that allows people to search for their Android smartphones or tablets via the Google search engine using their desktop computers. However, there are some criteria that must be met.

First of all, you must be logged in to the same Google account on your PC's browser that you use on your smartphone. Furthermore, you will need to have the latest version of the Google app installed on your handset.

Next thing you do is just type the phrase "find my phone" into the Google search engine on your PC. Google then generates a map that tries to locate the exact position of your device. It may take a few seconds to finish, but you should be able to get a location on the map that is accurate up to a certain proximity. To illustrate, the map can tell you that the location of your handset is accurate up to twenty meters.

This is really helpful if you lost your phone at a gas station, or at the mall, or at work. But what happens if, say, you can't find your phone inside your house? Information such as “the location of your device is accurate up to twenty meters” won't be of much help. 

But the good news is that Google can ring your device. You will just have to use your ears to locate where you misplaced your lost phone. In this type of situations, you just need to click the icon or link for Ring on the generated map. Your device will then ring at full volume, but only for up to five minutes. But that should be enough for you to go from room to room to find your lost device.

The Find My Phone feature can also be used to locate lost Android tablets. The same basic criteria apply, and just like with smartphones, you can have Google ring your Android tablet if you can't find it inside the house.

With this new feature, Google joins other device tracking tools such as the Android Device Manager, and of course, the Find My iPhone feature developed by Apple for iOS mobile devices.