- The OnePlus 13 can be located even when it is turned off
- OnePlus has enabled the necessary hardware support for the feature
- Google Find My Device received a big update in 2024
Google massively updated its Find My Device tool in 2024, an update that lets you find certain Pixel phones even when they're turned off. It has now been confirmed that the new OnePlus 13 gets the same trick.
The Search Off option was discovered during testing by Android Authority. It's certainly a useful feature, because if someone swipes on your phone, there's a good chance they'll turn it off immediately so you can't find it.
Until now, the Google Pixel 8, Google Pixel 8 Pro, and Google Pixel 9 phones were the only ones that could be detected via Find My Device when they were turned off. With other phones, you'll only get the last location reported before they were turned off.
The inclusion of the feature increases the appeal of what is already a hugely impressive phone – in our full review of the OnePlus 13 we described it as a “near-perfect flagship”, giving it 4.5 stars out of 5.
how it works
This is the secret to locating a turned off phone: it is actually not completely turned off. A section of the Bluetooth module remains activated and broadcasts its location to nearby devices on the Find My Device network.
That means you depend on other devices to find your lost phone. That was another improvement that Google added last year: collaborating in the task of finding devices anonymously and encrypted, just as Apple does on its Find My network.
This Bluetooth streaming won't continue indefinitely, but it should last at least a few hours. It requires specialized hardware inside the phone and for the manufacturer to enable it, which is why it is not widely supported at this time.
Hopefully that will change as we move forward to 2025. Google Pixel phones look set to support the feature in the future, and we'll have to wait and see if it appears on the Samsung Galaxy S25 series, which will be introduced in January. 22.
