My understanding is that Group B and Group C are the most common way that cell phones can be tracked in the way that most people think about GPS cell phone tracking. Group A does exists, but it doesn’t really provide pin-point location information like Groups A and B do.

Perhaps some further explanation will make those two sentences a little clearer. Generally speaking, there needs to be many different signals for a cell phone to figure out where it is in the world. These signals can come from GPS satellites or they can come from cell phone towers and there needs to be at least three different signals in order for pretty precise location to be found for the device. This is the way most people think about cell phone tracking – fairly accurate and precise location information found in real time – and this can only be achieved via multiple signals from several different GPS satellites or cell phone towers.

There is another form of cell phone tracking that can be done when only one cell tower is in range (Group A), but this cannot give pin-point location information. Instead, it tracks a phones movement over large geographical areas. It might work like this:

The cell phone of a suspect is in a rural area where it is only getting a signal from one tower. As it moves throughout the countryside, the police can get a weak trace on it – getting a rough estimate of where the suspect is.

I hope that has been a helpful explanation and I haven’t left out anything important. Thanks for asking such a good question!

-Joe

As far as I know, you are out of luck when it comes to being able to track a cell phone that is turned off. A cell phone without a battery is also not going to be able to be tracked through a GPS. I’m sorry, but I hope you get your cell phone back!

-Joe

I am sorry that you lost your phone. You should not call the police about a lost cell phone. They will not be able to help you and you will waste their time. You should really only call the police when a crime has been committed or you are in a very serious, life-or-death situation.

I recommend that you calm down and think about where you last put your cell phone. Remember which jacket or jeans you would have put it in and what you did with each one of those items. Build a mental history of what happened and then work forward from there. GPS tracking won’t help you find your lost cell phone now because it is turned off and probably didn’t have the software needed to make it work.

I hope you find your phone!

-Joe

I’m going to take your question in two parts. It seems like the first part is this, can you track a phone if it is not a smart phone? The answer depends on what you mean by the word “smartphone.” This is from Wikipedia:

A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities, often with PC-like functionality (PC-mobile handset convergence). There is no industry standard definition of a smartphone. For some, a smartphone is a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers. For others, a smartphone is simply a phone with advanced features like e-mail, Internet and e-book reader capabilities, and/or a built-in full keyboard or external USB keyboard and VGA connector. In other words, it is a miniature computer that has phone capability.

So, if you think that having a GPS component makes a cell phone a smartphone then the answer to your question is yes – the phone must be a smart phone in order for users to track it.

The second part of your question centered on the issue of whether or not you can track a phone that is not yours. The key thing to understand here is that you do need to be able to install some software onto the phone or be able to access already installed software on the phone in order to get the tracking information on it. In a de facto sort of way this means that most people are not going to be able to track a phone that is not theirs.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

-Joe

That is an excellent question. The short answer is no, you probably won’t be able to find your cell phone that you lost if you haven’t installed some sort of real time tracking software on it.

But …

You could find your cell phone, right now, if you had the full power of the cell phone company working for you. Almost all phones that are on can be tracked by the cell phone company if required by law enforcement personnel. Criminals can have their phone tracked without the phone having to have any special software installed in it. This is just the way that phones these days work. I just doubt that your cell phone company is going to begin tracking your cell phone for you just because you lost it.

It is unfortunate, but maybe you will install GPS tracking software on your phone next time?

-Joe