The first thing a phone thief does is switch the phone off, and the moment it goes dark every tracking app stops working. Apple broke that rule for iPhones in 2021 with a “Find My” network that keeps a tiny Bluetooth beacon alive after shutdown. Google is now expected to match it: reports ahead of the Google I/O conference on 14 May say Android 15 will let a phone be found when it is powered off or has no internet connection.
How it would work
Modern phones contain a Bluetooth Low Energy chip that can run on a trickle of battery long after the main system has shut down. Android 15 is expected to keep that chip broadcasting a short, encrypted identifier. Any other Android device that passes within range — and in a city like Dhaka that is a phone every few metres — picks up the signal and, without its owner noticing, reports the location to Google’s Find My Device network, which shows it to you on a map. The thief’s phone never has to connect to anything. The crowd around it does the reporting.
Which phones
The catch is hardware: the phone needs a Bluetooth chip and power design that keep the beacon alive after shutdown, which most existing Android phones do not have. Google’s recent Pixel models already include it, so they will get the feature first, and a new Pixel is expected to be announced at the same conference. Samsung and other makers would need to build it into future models. In practical terms, no phone currently on sale in Bangladesh outside the Pixel line is likely to support offline finding when Android 15 ships.
What else I/O may bring
Android 15 itself is expected in beta at the conference, and the larger announcements will almost certainly be about artificial intelligence — Gemini in more of Android, and in Search — which has dominated Google’s events for the past year.
Why it matters here
Phone snatching is the most common street crime in Dhaka, and the stolen phones are switched off, sold within hours and reflashed. The network approach is the only tracking method that survives that, because it does not depend on the phone being on. Its value in Bangladesh, though, depends on scale: the network is only as dense as the number of phones that participate, and until offline-capable Android models are common here the map will show a last-seen point and then nothing. Meanwhile the older advice stands — set a strong screen lock, turn on Find My Device today, and record the IMEI somewhere other than the phone.
Why your current phone probably cannot get this
The important detail is that this is not a software feature, which is why an update alone will not bring it to a handset already in your pocket.
For a phone to broadcast a Bluetooth beacon while switched off, a sliver of power has to keep reaching the Bluetooth radio after the processor has shut down — a reserve path, controlled in hardware, that most Android phones simply do not have. Apple added it to the iPhone’s power management silicon, which is why Find My works on a powered-off iPhone 11 and later and not on earlier ones.
So expect this to arrive on phones launched with Android 15, not on phones updated to it. Which makes the advice in the article above the operative part for everyone else: Find My Device, a screen lock, and the IMEI written down somewhere that is not the phone.
Source: TechRadar, via Prothom Alo.
