Why won't "Find My Iphone" show last known location?

does anyone know why there is the 24 hour limit? is it somehow possible to obtain the last tracked position after that? i'd pay for that!

also i like the idea of being able to activate just enough battery power to snitch it's position!

for me the case is i had been to a party, and was sleeping a lot the next day. did some surfing on my ipad and slept some more before thinking of my phone. probably 24 hours had passed, cause FMiP only says 'pending'..

Deleting the saved locations of our phones after 24 hours is inexcusable, Apple. If you had a reason to do this, you should have explained yourself.

These are the choices that make your users stop buying and recommending your products.

24 hours is OK until its greater than 24 hours and then you are screwed. I didn't realize there was a 24 hours window so I located my phone last night and figured I would retrieve it the next day. Low and behold its >24 hours and now I don't have the location anymore. Shame on me for not screen capturing it but that doesn't help me now.

Come on Apple fix it.

-andy

in response to Lawrence Finch,

Hi, I had the same problem with jks586 2 days ago, and relying on the info on apple/support it sais even if the battery is dead or iPhone is offline it can tell you where it was last seen up to 24 hours. Okay.

Above you told that anyone should load the location periodically. Okay, then let's say I loaded it last 3days ago, then I lost it and the battery went dead. Now should I expect the app to show me where it was 3 days ago (because it was my last load) or the place just before it's battery has gone dead and the iPhone was turned off? If not, then the app's this feature has no meaning, because if I could have loaded the location just before it turned offline, I would probably don't need "where it was last seen after it became dead" feature because I would figure it out myself before it become dead.

Hello. My uncle just lost his iPhone 4s. It happened just this morning, the battery was full. I cannot find anything other than "offline" in "Find my iPhone". Where should this "last location" be found? It's anywhere. Of course it's been less than 24h since the loss, sho I should be able to find it. But I am not.

Being able to remotely send a signal to allow the phone to use some sort of reserve battery or solar power to send even just a one time location signal would be a feature that I would definitely pay for. Everyone in the world knows that Iphones can be tracked. Therefore, when somebody steals or "finds" one, they will simply and quickly power it off until they are ready to proceed with whatever shady plans they have. Requiring a password in order to power down the Iphone would have helped me locate my phone after it was taken from my pocket (I was at a music venue with a plethora of police officers to help). Now it is probably half way across the world or in a trash can.

Hi

Sorry to hear you lost your iphone.

If Find My iPhone can’t locate a device, the last known location is displayed for up to 24 hours. Select “Notify me when found” to get an email when it comes online.

in response to ssschmidt

Hey, thanks for info. I had a screen lock, plus simlock (pin code). In this situation, if someone else charges it and try to turn it on, can I see it? I presume, it needs to be the unlocked in order to get online, right? even if he/she takes the simcard out and puts a new one in, still it can not get connected to the internet because of the screen lock right?

My iPhone 6 was stolen but even within 12 hours of that it didn't show its last known location.

My MacBook's location does give a "Last known" but not my iPhone.

Agreed. It should keep the last known location until you remove the phone, or for an extended period (30 days?). It's bad enough tracing it when lost, but when stolen, the thieves just need to remove the sim, and sit on it until they can figure if they can hack it. Apple has done a good job of deterring the theft, but this needs to better more obvious to the potential thieves, and they need to enhance it somehow to let it be known to anyone that tries to use it, that the phone will be traced until the original owner "releases" it, or there is special authorization at the carrier or Apple store. The same scam is tried on unsuspecting customers when they buy stolen phones that are tied to an iCloud account. The phones may appear ready for first install (the "Hello" screen), but It's only after the purchase, when they get the phone home and try and link to iTunes do they realize that it's locked to the original owner. There should be a notification on the start screen, along with the "Hello", indicating that the phone is still registered and needs the original owner to release it via iCloud, even if they were able to reset it.

The app and icloud.com/find only check the location when you load them. So you need to load them periodically. Then they will show you the last known location. If they always knew where the phone was they would have to track it continuously, which would kill your battery much faster (and use more data). There ARE apps and services that will do this, and they DO use up the battery pretty fast.

There is a new feature in iOS 8, that if enabled, will send the location of your device when battery life is critical (IE before it dies). That probably doesn't help in this situation, but it may help someone else.

The only real action that the OP can take is to enable lost mode in the hopes that if the person who has the phone charges it, and turns it on, it will provide it's location as well as the information provided during the lost mode setup.

This has happened to me twice, so I decided to test the feature. I documented the time the battery went dead on a test iPhone (around 3 am), however, went I went to iCloud to "Find my iPhone", the last known location of this device was at 4PM of the day before. I'm very upset that this feature doesn't really seem to do what it's supposed to. Has anyone tested it as well?

Sorry but it did not work. Mine was set and still it did not show the last location within 24h

Yes, my experience also.

This is not OK!

Where is apple's response to this???????