You might be able to find OnePlus 13 even if it's powered off

Leaving the financial loss aside, losing your smartphone means losing your personal data. If it lands in the wrong hands, it can be a nightmare. Google is aware of this issue and included a theft protection feature on the Android. While it’s handy, it can be hard to track a robbed or stolen phone if it’s immediately powered off. However, it seems you might be able to find the OnePlus 13 with a powered-off tracking feature.

You could find a stolen or lost OnePlus 13 with the help of powered-off tracking feature

If you are unaware, you can already track a powered-off Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 (Review) phones in the event of theft. To catch you up, the Open Beta of OxygenOS 15 for OnePlus 12 which rolled out last month included a new label in the power off menu. That label hinted that users can track their powered-off phone.

However, the label was absent in the stable Android 15 release for the OnePlus 12 that rolled out this week. Now, we may have the actual reason behind it, all thanks to popular Android reporter, Mishaal Rahman.

In his recent report for Android Authority, Rahman mentioned that OnePlus informed that the OnePlus 12 doesn’t have the necessary hardware to support this specific feature. That’s not the case with the OnePlus 13 since it runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC with Qualcomm’s Fast Connect 7900 Connectivity System.

It’s up to OnePlus now if it wants to add this feature, though

A Qualcomm spokesperson told Rahman that FastConnect 7900 does support powered-off tracking. So, it’s possible that you could track down a stolen or lost OnePlus 13 even when it is powered off. The OnePlus 13 recently became official in China a few days ago. But, it has yet to hit the global markets.

So, it’ll be interesting to see if OnePlus opts to include this feature. For those curious, when a phone shuts down, this software feature uses its Bluetooth controller to send out pre-computed location beacons to nearby devices. Then, it relays the phone’s location to the Find My Device service enabling you to locate your switch-off device. Moreover, this feature is equally handy to find a device that is out of battery.