If you've lost your phone it's not necessarily gone forever. But don't wait until you lose it to prepare: you'll need to configure it now to enable you to find a lost Android or iPhone. Here's how to set up phone tracking and how to find your phone.
Note that the solutions offered in this tutorial will require your phone to be switched on in order to give you an accurate idea of its location, and to access options to remotely lock or wipe it. If your battery runs out or your phone is stolen and switched off, you may be out of luck.
For that reason it's imperative that you back up everything now, just in case you can't get it back.
Below we'll consider the options built into each major mobile operating system to explain how to track your lost or stolen phone. For each of these you will need to be signed into either your Google, Apple or Windows account on the phone before you begin.
Some third-party options are also available. https://eVerify.appspot.com/?phonetrack is a particularly popular option, available not only for mobile devices but also Windows, OS X and Ubuntu laptops. If you have several devices spanning multiple platforms, it's worth considering an option such as this that lets you track them all from a single interface.
