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photonbeam

The phones are trackable via gps

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Boeing needs "Find My Door"

They should make the whole plane out of AirTags

Good thing ships aren't losing doors. As far as I know, Apple doesn't offer SeaTags.

Well, at least it was the side that fell off, not the front.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

I don't think it fell outside the environment either.

Well at least one did in the 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_MS_Estonia#Offi...

Ships do lose containers regularly though. New market opportunity!

How do you misplace a container?

They lose them to sea weather. It's a thing: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/01/983017153/cargo-overboard-int...

And the sucked out phones can do the reporting

And the Air Force needs "Find My F-35". Lol.

The post says the phone was in airplane mode, and was found by chance as someone walked past it.

Technically it had been in airplane mode, but now it was in sideoftheroad mode.

Maybe a phone could automatically disable airplane mode if it detects a sudden loss of altitude?

Automatically switches to last words recorder mode.

Reminds me of the skydiver who dropped his camera and you can watch it spin and eventually land in a pigpond where a pig investigates it. It’s on YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QrxPuk0JefA, if anything else is curious.

Have to admit, amazing plot and production, all in a minute!

I love that video

Find My works in airplane mode.

So, being in airplane mode helped it land safely? :)

Apparently not a factor in this case, though true.

The phone was in airplane mode, so not actually trackable.

Airplane mode allows bluetooth, so it is trackable through Find My.

I was rather surprised at this comment. A quick google later it seems that airplane mode turns off all radio communication (as I suspected), but apparently it is possible to turn Bluetooth or WiFi on while remaining in airplane mode. At least for some phones.

Honestly did not consider that.

I do this as soon as I’m home. Now both Android and iOS automatically keep bluetooth and wifi on when turning on airplane mode, provided the user does it the first time.

I do it because cell reception is quite poor at my house so calls are better off staying on wifi - also battery life is improved.

I fly regularly with an iPhone and use United’s WiFi entertainment on a regular basis. Also I often switch on airplane mode when I don’t want an international plan to activate and use WiFi all the time.

Airplane mode on iOS does _not_ by default turn off wifi and bluetooth, just the cellular radio. At least in Europe; it's possible that this is driven by regional regulations. Though I think pretty much everywhere allows use of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands in the air now.

The reason being that "airplane mode" is there to save the terrestrial mobile network. It has nothing to do with the airplane, and there's no reason to turn off wifi or bluetooth on an airplane.

Bluetooth is nearfield. Increases the radius of finding it, but still makes it a needle-in-a-haystack, IMO.

Not in airplane mode, though.

I actually wondered about this. My iPhone can be located even when turned off, so long as I haven't deactivated that functionality at shutdown (has to be done each time). Is an iPhone in airplane mode really less trackable than an iPhone that is turned off?

Find My is bluetooth-based, which is fine to use on airplanes as well.

I feel like the BT behavior varies when I activate airplane mode. If I am currently connected to my BT headphones, they stay connected. If I am not, then activating airplane mode appears to turn off BT (pulling out my headphones and trying to connect doesn't work). But I would be surprised if the Find My functionality didn't work in airplane mode, given how Apple set it up to work even when turned off (you must manually set it not to be active, and you must put in your passcode each time).

I imagine airplane mode turns off regular Bluetooth, but Bluetooth Low Energy meant for “Find My” is still allowed.

The same behavior as turning off the phone.

I think airplane mode has memory and just switches to the last settings you had in airplane mode. My WiFi and BT stay turned on.

When I turn on Airplane mode on my iPhone, it switches bluetooth into that "not quite off" mode that you get if you just tap the Bluetooth button in the control center (the icon goes white rather than a cross through it like if you turn it off completely in Settings). The Not Quite Off mode IIRC allows stuff like Apple Watch, Apple Pencil, Handoff, Find My, etc[0] to use Bluetooth but it disconnects all the paired Bluetooth devices you are using (basically it solves that "damn my phone is still connected to the headphones in the other room!" problem that 90% of people turning Bluetooth off are trying to fix)

[0] Full list https://support.apple.com/en-au/102412

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