Stolen iPhone moving on map - lost mode still 'Pending'?

If you see a "Pending" message, the phone is not yet in Lost Mode.

Even if the phone has been powered off.......(very likely if the phone was stolen, because thieves normally do this)......it will still send out a very brief intermittent Bluetooth signal that can be picked up by another iOS device, which will forward information about the location. That is likely the location information that you are seeing at this time.

But....Lost Mode will not be implemented using this type of connection. Lost Mode will not be implemented until the phone has a good, constant, strong cellular connection and the battery is in good shape.

Another way to say the same thing.....the phone currently does not have a good strong cellular connection and/or the battery may have run down quite a bit.

Unfortunately, there is not really anything that you can do about this, except keep checking a few times each day to see if the status of the phone has changed.

Watch out for scam messages that indicate that your phone has been found and you just need to provide a bit more information so the phone can be returned to you. Apple does not get involved with lost or stolen phones, so you know that the message is not from Apple. The message is from someone who is trying to trick you into providing personal information like your Passcode and Apple account information. You need to ignore any messages like this.

as soon as the phone is powered on, will the e-sim connect automatically?

Yes, assuming that the phone is receiving a strong cellular signal where it is currently located at the time and the battery is in good shape. But, thieves will almost always power off a phone ASAP to try prevent the owner from tracking the phone.

The thieves won't be able to disable cellular on the phone, because they would have to know the passcode to get into the settings on the phone.

Most of them are not aware of newer features on the phone that will send out a very brief intermittent Bluetooth signal even if the phone has been powered off. This brief intermittent signal can continue for days until the battery finally runs down. Then, you will see a "No Location Found" when you try to use Find My.

You will also see a "No Location Found" message if the thieves are smart and wrap aluminum foil around the phone or place the phone in a special type of small bag that will not allow the phone to either send or receive a signal.

I

It would not be surprising to see that your phone is in China in a few weeks at the huge remanufacturing plant in Shenzhen.

Over the last few years, thieves have learned that they can make a faster and much easier buck by selling a stolen phone to a "fence" who forwards phones to China. The huge remanufacturing plant there receives hundreds of phones each day.

mattyp650 wrote:

Does that really work? Aluminum foil...wow!

Aluminum conducts electricity. So an aluminum foil wrap can form a crude Faraday cage.

Anyways, I've more or less written off the phone but it's interesting to see where it will end up. Unless it gets parted out, I think it will have to be connected again somewhere. Maybe by someone who purchases it online?

Unfortunately, the phone was stolen in San Francisco so there will be plenty of fences around town who can make a quick buck parting it out. I just wonder how much one could really get with the parts of an iPhone 16 pro?

There's an infamous overseas "reprocessing" facility where many iPhones show up briefly, at about the same time their owners get "phishing" messages and even messages with threatening pictures of guns. Hopefully you won't have the "pleasure" of seeing your iPhone show up at this place, or of receiving such messages. Those "phishing" messages and threats represent the last attempt of the thieves to fool you into releasing Activation Lock – so they have a valuable intact phone to sell. If they don't get that "first choice", they take your phone apart for parts.

This facility may be seeing a little crimp in their "business" in the future. In iOS 18, Apple extended Activation Lock to key iPhone parts. Once people learn that stolen parts from recent iPhones aren't as useful as they once were, it may reduce the incentive to steal iPhones for the same reason that Activation Lock on iPhones as a whole did.