Can I turn off my missing smartphone from my laptop?

[zlloyd1]

Hey all, I seem to have somehow managed to misplace my phone, and after using the Google online 'Find My Phone' website, cannot find it, even though it is showing that it's in my house somewhere....
It is slowly running out of charge, and playing a sound, nor calling the phone is allowing me to find it, so I am trying to find out if there is any way that I can remotely use my laptop to get the phone to Shut down?? Keep in mind that I do not have physical access to the phone, so cannot install any apps on the device, but since I can use the Google website to cause the phone to ring, without an app installed on it I am thinking there could be a way to cause it to shut down from a website. At least I am hopeful, that I may stop the battery from completely losing charge before I can find it.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated, and Thanks in advance!!

 

[ocnbrze]

nope. you can lock it and remotely wipe its data.....but you can't power off.

 

[ocnbrze]

if you had an app installed on the phone already, then maybe:

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Looking for effective ways to turn off phone from anywhere remotely? We will illustrate the different methods you can follow to shut down phone remotely.

www.airdroid.com

but you do not, so...................

 

[Hadron]

How will shutting it down help? You won't be able to remotely power it up again, so it will be no different from the battery running out. Or is this just that you've read that it's better not to let the battery drain and so want to stop that happening? If so, don't worry: running it down occasionally won't do any harm, it's regularly doing that that is bad for the battery longevity.

Google's "find my device" website should be able to make it ring even if it is in silent mode, so it seems very strange that you cannot find it using that if it actually is in your house (unless you use an inaudible ringtone, since it seems to use your normal phone ringtone for this - I just tested it).

 

[Dannydet]

So how is it that the phone is in your house but you cannot find it while it is ringing? You should be able to carry a second phone on you and keep calling your phone until you find it...

 

[Rob]

Try looking under/in the couch cushions and in the bed sheets... it's probably under an object that's muffling the audio so badly that you can't hear the ring when remotely triggered.

Or maybe you sleepwalked and left it in the refrigerator when you went looking for a midnight snack. I've actually done that before! Lol

 

[olbriar]

I've heard that the trash dumpster can collect lost phones. The phone gets picked up with newspapers or magazines and is accidently deposited. Best of luck in your hunt for lost October.

 

[Dannydet]

Try your laundry baskets, garage, drawers, upstairs, downstairs, basement, patio, perimeter of the house outside...

 

[zlloyd1]

I found the phone, it was actually outside and had fallen out of my jacket pocket in the yard....
For the record, it was not ringing at all, I checked after finding it, NOTHING.
I then tried to find a way to contact Google about this, only to find that they had disabled all methods of reaching them.
WHAT A GARBAGE COMPANY!!

 

[olbriar]

I'm glad that you found your phone.

 

[zlloyd1]

I'm glad that you found your phone.

THANKS!!

 

[treb1797]

 

[Hadron]

I found the phone, it was actually outside and had fallen out of my jacket pocket in the yard....
For the record, it was not ringing at all, I checked after finding it, NOTHING.

Out of curiosity, what happened if you phoned it?

I then tried to find a way to contact Google about this, only to find that they had disabled all methods of reaching them.

WHAT A GARBAGE COMPANY!!

Even the support forums (which are just community support, i.e. not Google employees)? To be fair, Google have never been terribly responsive anyway.

Your phone was made by LG, so you could try them. However LG no longer make phones so I don't know whether their phone support is still active (they said they'd maintain it for a bit, but they've been out of the business a long time now). And the problem when 2 companies are involved is that often each one just points at the other and you get nothing.

In fact there are 3 parties involved here: Google (who provide the base OS and the Find My Device app), LG (who adapted the base Android OS to their phone and added a set of changes of their own, and would be responsible for updates to system components), and you (the setup of your phone). And we don't know where the problem lies: with Google, with LG, with some quirk in your particular phone's setup, or with an interaction between these things. I can tell you that the function you tried to use does work on my phone, so it's not simply broken (or not for everyone. It also works if I silence the phone or turn the ringer volume down. But why it didn't work on your phone I don't know.

 

[Hadron]

Did you read the thread, or just the first post? Because the OP found their phone 2 days ago.