I found my phone using this. Thanks. It was under my sofa. Great story by the way.

Great to see people doing some good. It's pretty rare.

For these to work effectively, GPS needs to be on 24hrs,which as we know drains battery massively.Without it then the missing phone can rely on Bluetooth and so...

Wait, journalist helps friend and indyp bro hates on it. What world do you live in indyp? I like that he guides us through his process of locating it. This brings a bit of hope to humanity that there are people out there who will help those in need. So indyp, you should perhaps check yourself.

Would rather have my phone tossed in a river than left unlocked and someone have full access to my device/available for me to track.

The data on the phone is far, far more valuable than the phone itself.  That is why Apple/Google/Samsung pretty much force you to have screen locks these days.

This article might as well be titled, "How to continue encouraging theft of phones."

You also encouraged your friend to keep doing this by doing the hard work for him.  What incentive does he have to learn the lesson?  What would have happened had the thief had a weapon upon approaching them?

So many head-scratchers in this article.

Your privacy is all stolen by Google and Samsung, the routine precursor is move your data to your offline storage and when lost or stolen, buy another rather than cave into already deplorable privacy situation. Don't buy expensive phone because some reviewers with clickbaits said so. A mid range phone does more than enough at lower cost