Android 15 may let you locate your smartphone even when it is switched off

We’re sure at some point or the other, some of you may have lost your phone. Perhaps you forgot it in class or dropped it somewhere on the train on the way home. Luckily though, all is not lost, for there are many apps available that let you find your phone easily. These include Google’s Find My Device and the Find My app from Apple.

Even then though, there is a major downside to these apps. This being the fact that they can locate your phone only when it is switched on. However, at long last, Google seems to have a solution in store for us. Read on to find out more.

Powered-off find my device on Android 15: How it will work

A report from Android Police suggests that Android 15 will come with a new API, which could allow users to locate lost devices even if they’re switched off. Now, with most Android smartphones, when they’re powered off, their Bluetooth controllers stop receiving power. This, in turn, makes them incapable of broadcasting beacons which could allow other Android devices around to locate them, on the Find My Device network.

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Now, Google’s new API, instead of using beacon broadcasts, will use pre-computed Bluetooth beacons stored in the memory of the Bluetooth controller on the phone, which will allow you to find your smartphone even if it has been turned off.

Which smartphones are expected to receive the feature

The new powered-off find my device API will make its way to Android devices globally with the rollout of the Android 15 update. There is a catch, though. The feature may not be available for several Android smartphones, even if they’re eligible to receive the update. This is primarily owing to hardware restrictions.

For the API to work, a device also needs to have hardware support for powering the Bluetooth controller when it is shut down. Secondly, phones also need to support the Bluetooth Finder hardware abstraction layer (HAL) so that Android OS on the phone can enable the ‘powered off finding mode’ and send the precomputed Bluetooth beacons that the API uses.

When could the powered-off find my device feature be rolled out?

Fun fact, Google has been working on adding powered-off finding support to Play Services since last year. For example, in the Android 14 QPR1 update, Google added a special dialog that’s shown at the bottom of the shutting-down screen. It lets the user know that they can locate their phone with Find My Device, even when it’s turned off. It doesn’t pop up by default though, since Google is yet to actually launch the feature.

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For now, it seems that most of Google’s existing Pixel devices will support the feature. The powered-off Find My Device feature is being expected to be launched along with the upcoming Google Pixel 9. Once it rolls out to the Pixel series of smartphones, the feature should make it way to other Android phones from the likes of Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and others soon.