rax king: how can i find a phone owner whose phone i found? it’s locked so there’s nothing on it that’s visible to me abt who the person is or whatever

how can i find a phone owner whose phone i found? it’s locked so there’s nothing on it that’s visible to me abt who the person is or whatever

From experience: You can take a pic without unlocking. Write a message w your name and number and it’ll get uploaded to the cloud. Otherwise wait for calls!

This is absolutely genius!

so ridiculous there's no centralized system for this, you should be able to drop it in a mailbox like a drivers license

i tried to give it to the station manager of the subway station where i found it and he threw up his hands and went ‘i can’t take that from you!!’ lmao

In my experience, if you sit somewhere for long enough with the lost phone sitting openly on the table in front of you, someone will eventually come along and scream at you for robbing them... 🤷‍♀️ Hope this helps 🤗

What I’ve done is press the button to get a voice prompt then said, “Call mom”

Someone once returned my phone to me by seeing an Instagram notification come in, which included my account name, and DMing me! Keeping a lookout for details like that is my best suggestion

If it’s an iPhone you might have this option at the unlock screen; it’s worked to get my lost phone back to me once!

Same for Android, came to leave pretty much the same comment

Is it an iPhone?

yessir

This is a long shot but

If anything maybe take it to the Apple Store?

Take the SIM card out, put it in another phone, and see if they saved any contacts to the SIM card. If they did, call them and see if they can help. Contacts rarely get saved to SIM anymore though so it's kind of a long shot.

When I’ve found phones previously I just kept them charged and waited for the owner (or someone else) to try calling it. On one of them (iPhone) an sms showed up on the lock screen and I was able to reply to that person.

If it’s a recent iphone hold down power and volume up until the power off screen comes up and see if they set medical id info?

“Hey siri, call mom”

honestly hope someone they know / they call you (since you'll be able to pick up the call) & figuring out how to get it back to them

That's how I got a phone back to somebody that I found in the middle of the road like 10 years ago or something

Can you tell who the service provider is? If so, take it to one of their offices and they can contact the owner.

As a secondary note to anybody really, usually you can put a message on your lock screen in your settings if you have an Android. Anyway. Go do that and put a phone number there so that if you lose your phone people can return it to you.

You can do this with iPhones too!

As a tertiary note to anybody, go put anything BUT your phone number there, because guess what, if you lose your phone there might be a slight challenge contacting you through that one :)

keeping it charged until someone from their contacts calls/texts so you can answer is a good start

my lock screen says it's a us cellular phone, so if you know the service provider, you could take it in to one of their stores, and they should be able to contact the person somehow

What brand of phone? A lot have the option of setting an emergency contact, although folks have to remember to set that, etc

If it’s an iPhone take it to Apple, if you have a store located near you. Better still, call them, just in case they stupidly say they can’t help.

Keep it safe or turn into a lost and found at a shop with trustworthy employees and maybe they will use Find My Phone and find it?

Best to keep it local to where you found it because someone will come looking for it eventually. Bonus points for keeping it charged if you can

If they don’t have an emergency medical contact then you can pull the SIM card out to find the carrier and SIM serial, they can find the owner from that. You can also find the IMEI on the sim carrier slot, in tiny letters. If it’s a newer eSIM only iPhone then that won’t work, thanks Apple.

If it has a SIM card you can figure out which carrier it has service through, and then contact the carrier?

Take a pic of a note with your contact info saying you found the phone: you don’t need to unlock to use the camera and it may sync to other devices. Look for notifications that pop up in case you find the that person and ask them to reach to the phone owner. I got an iPad back to its owner that way.

Post