Find My Device is completely useless until the device is unlocked. As long as it is rebooted and not unlocked, there is no way to detect its location. Since most phones (if not all), use an encrypted filesystem. With such, no service can’t start if the device isn’t initially unlocked after reboot, including Find my device.
This isn’t only a issue with Google’s implementation, it’s the same with other implementations to.
Pretty sure this isn’t true. Afaik, you can exclude files from encryption on Android. This is also why you see your custom wallpaper before unlocking the phone.
Feel free to try it by yourself. Nothing easier than that. Reboot your phone and try to find it via Find My Device or ring it, without to enter your password before. It will not work.
BTW: it doesn’t make sense to exclude security and privacy related things from encryption. Otherwise there would be an unusually high risk to compromise this sort of data.
Sounds like a 1:1 copy of the Apple Find My Network. :)
Nice that the two ecosystems inspire each other. Let’s see to what Android inspires iOS in the future.
