Android 15 will let you find your Pixel 8 even when it's off
The Google Pixel 8 will support Android's Powered Off Finding feature, which will let you locate your phone even when it's turned off
cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/7007064
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That's great.
I like a phone that's able to just run little Bluetooth beacons when it's powered off. Especially ones that can't be disabled except by disassembling it.
I'll take it. I'd rather not lose my phone above it pinging the Bluetooth while powered off, and they sell Faraday cage boxes for pretty cheap if I have reason to not want any signal coming or going to my cell phone, which I would trust more than any phone pre android 15 with, if I want to be paranoid about it. So even now I don't trust that my phone being off means it couldn't be located. None of the hardware in my phone is open source.
I don't like how privacy is becoming more of a binary. If the choices really become "either let the phone turn into a beacon or stuff it in a Faraday bag" then that's one hell of a choice isn't it?
And hypothetically, if phones were always capable of doing this to some degree and we just weren't informed somehow, then they're finally rolling that functionality out because it's become culturally normalized. Which frightens me more, frankly.
Bro, how many years you been seeing movies and TV shows where they stomping on phones and pulling batteries an trashing them "so they aren't tracked". They do it in the movies because that public perception has been there for ages. True or not.
I would want the Faraday cage to have a beacon on it, so that I could find my phone even if I lost it while it was in its Faraday cage. Logical.
You are a brilliant man.
Custom rom ?
When it's shut down the custom ROM isn't running. This would be custom firmware for the phone.
Or it isn't really "off" and they're faking it.
But yes, you're probably right that it's something lower level.
Depends if this is already baked into the firmware the device shipped with and is just being pushed into user space with a software update, or if the update is also pushing out the firmware to add it.
If it's former, then yeah, probably SOL.
But if it's the latter, it might be possible to get avoid and even get Android 15 ROMS that strip out those parts.
I'd be surprised if custom ROMs were a thing on the Google Pixel, which is the most likely phone company to allow such a thing to begin with. After all, their Pixels are still technically developer phones, AFAIK.
I wouldn't trust my current phone even with a custom rom. Some stuff could be at the hardware level. You want to know your phone can't be found for sure, buy a little Faraday cage box for like $15 online and then test it to make sure it works.
I'd prefer it be an option I can enable or disable per device.
I wish pinephone pro's weren't booty. Hardware switches to cut power to everything from the WiFi module to the camera sounds pretty hot in light of this.
