iOS 15 Find My network can still find your iPhone when it is powered off, or factory reset All About iCloud and iOS Bug Hunting

Lost iPhone? With iOS 15, ‘Find My’ works even when an iPhone is off or wiped. iPhone owners will soon be able to track down their iPhone using the Find My app even when it’s switched off or has been wiped.

With iOS 15, your iPhone or iPad is still traceable through the Find My network even when the device is powered off. It seems that with iOS 15, the phone is not really fully ‘powered off’, it stays in a low-power state and acts like an AirTag, allowing any nearby iOS device to pick up the Bluetooth signal and send back its location.

iOS 15 Find My network can still find your iPhone when it is powered off, or factory reset

With iOS 15, your iPhone is still traceable through the Find My network even when the device is powered off. It seems that with iOS 15, the phone is not really fully ‘powered off’, it stays in a low-power state and acts like an AirTag, allowing any nearby iOS device to pick up the Bluetooth signal and send back its location. This also means if your iPhone runs out of battery during the day, you still have a chance of finding its location for several more hours. In fact, Apple says the location tracking will even keep working whilst the phone is reset to factory settings with Activation Lock enabled.

If power off will connect to another iphone / ipad nearby via Bluetooth / airdrop. Will then borrow the wifi / 4G connection of the machine connected to the location and send it to the Apple server whatever location is.