Find My iPhone is a feature that can help you find a lost or stolen iOS device (iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch). If this feature has been activated on your iOS device, you can sign in to the iCloud website, or use any other iOS device that’s signed into the same iCloud account, to locate your missing device. Previously, though, this would only work if the missing device was still on; if the battery died, or the device was deliberately turned off, you were out of luck.
The update to Find My iPhone solves this with a new feature called Send Last Location, which sends the location of the device to Apple when it detects the battery is critically low. Then, if you try to locate the device, you will be shown where it was when it died. Obviously, this doesn’t help you if the device was deliberately turned off, nor will it help if the device was moved after it died. You also won’t be able to make the missing device play a sound if it has died, which is useful when Find My iPhone only gets you to the general area, but not to the exact spot, as often happens.
Send Last Location is not turned on by default. You can turn it on by opening Settings, then going to iCloud, then to Find My iPhone. Here is where you can turn the entire Find My iPhone feature on if it wasn’t already, as well as turn on the sub-feature Send Last Location.
Despite the limitations, Send Last Location is an improvement to Find My iPhone. Still, I believe the feature could be improved further if the location of the device was sent to Apple whenever the device is deliberately turned off as well. It could be improved beyond that by saving a tiny bit of battery power to play the pinging sound for a minute or two. This could be done by the auto-shutoff being programmed to happen a minute or two sooner.
Send Last Location is only available in iOS 8, the latest update for Apple’s iOS devices. iOS 8 came out this week, and will come pre-installed on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. It is compatible with all iPhones from the 4S on, all iPads from the 2 on, all iPad minis, and the iPod Touch 5G. However, I have seen many reports that the iPhone 4S becomes very slow with iOS 8, so if you have one, you may wish to skip updating.
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