Apple has a nice feature of iCloud that allows you to find your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, or Macintosh on a Map if it is lost or stolen called “Find My Phone”. But what if you lose your iPhone and have not set this up in advance? Fortunately for you there’s an alternative. It only works if you have more than one phone on your AT&T account. It works even if you do not have an iPhone on AT&T. I do not know what the other carriers offer. The feature is called FamilyMap. It typically costs $10 per month so it is more expensive than Apple’s free iCloud. It does offer Geo-fences for your phones based on the time of day. And it can be turned on after you have lost your phone.http://att.com/familymap
In order to prove your identity AT&T sends an text message to your phone. This is not helpful if you have already lost your phone. You can have that password sent to another phone on your same billing account. Once your account is created, you can use AT&T’s network to locate your lost phone. If the phone has a GPS and that information is shared with the network then the location can be known to a few feet. Without GPS it will give you a rough estimate.
Family map is free for 30 days if you cancel during the trail period. It does not offer the other features that iCloud has such as remotely wiping or putting a message up on the screen but it is a good alternative if you have already lost your phone.
