How to find your lost Android device such as a Tablet or Samsung Player etc. which doesn’t have SMS support

Recently we helped a friend of ours locate a lost Android music player. It was lost inside the home and they were unable to locate it. Here are the steps we took to find it:

Luckily the device had enough power and it was connected to the home network so that we could do few things with it.

1. Go to your router and look at the DHCP client list. If the device is turned on and connected, you should see an entry in the DHCP client list.
2. If you have multiple devices then you might want to look up the vendor from the MAC address. There are few lookup databases but few we tried didn’t work. Eventually we found a page which listed the vendor name and first three segments. From that list, we confirmed that this nameless device is indeed the device which he was trying to find.
3. Next, we went online and found couple of apps.

First was Android Lost Free - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androidlost



It requires the user to register the device with their site. Now, that was NOT possible in this scenario.


So, next up was another companion app called AndroidLost Jumpstart - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androidlost.jumpstart


Both the apps are written by the same developer (Theis Borg).

The AndroidLost Jumpstart app simply registers the phone with www.androidlost.com and ties to the Google account with which the device is registered to.


4. Sequence of installation and registration is something like this.
1. Install the AndroidLost Jumpstart first.
2. Register with www.androidlost.com using your Google account. Please ensure that you use the same Google account which is used for logging in the device.
3. Install Android Lost Free.
4. Wait few minutes (4-5 minutes in our case)
5. Login to the www.androidlost.com with your Google account and after some time, it should pop up a message congratulating you and saying that this device is registered.
6. Now you need to go to the Control web page and turn on the Alarm on the phone through the site. The device starts blaring and flashing and it is easy to locate it inside the home.

Anyways, I am installing this Android Lost Free on my android devices to keep track of them.

To Theis Borg – this is a very useful app.

Now, there are other apps which can help locate the devices and allow you to remotely control these too. However, what I find unique about this app is that you could register the device remotely and then start using the app. That is way too cool.