Finding phones
Tonight I was walking the dog and noticed an iPhone in the gutter of the street just before the park. It was almost dead but not yet in Lost Mode so I took it with me to charge at home. Luckily, as I was walking back, two (obviously pretty drunk) people were tracking it I'm guessing based on either a shared location or Find My iPhone. They were very grateful and stumbled back to wherever they were before.
It got me wondering though. How might I have found the phone's owner if they didn't have the phone set to Lost Mode and they left the area without realizing their phone was gone? My first instinct would have been to ask Siri to call mom or dad. If those contacts weren't saved under those names though, how would I have done it?
When I got home I tried asking Siri commands on my own phone to see if I could trigger Lost Mode or find a number to call. There was nothing I was able to trigger with a voice command. It's surprising to me as Apple really seemed to put in the work on a unified Find My app. You'd think that commitment would have gone a bit further.
A "Who is your owner" or "This iPhone is lost" would have potentially been helpful to me rather than trying to get Siri to make a call or charge the phone and just hope the owner eventually shows up. Imagine if you could tell Siri "this iPhone is lost" and Apple automatically sent an iMessage or notification to trusted contacts. Wading through the privacy implications of that is something I won't do here but I have some confidence there is a secure and helpful way of doing it. Just maybe not one that's worth the effort considering the existing Find My functionality.