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A couple of days ago, the SAYS team headed out for our monthly team lunch
It was supposed to be a simple, cheerful outing. We booked a six-seater e-hailing ride to ferry as many of us as possible, chatting away the entire journey.
We arrived, thanked the driver, paid the fare, and headed towards the restaurant, ready to feast.
Five steps later, my heart sank.
I instinctively reached into my pocket and realised it was empty. I let out an expletive right there on the pavement.
My review unit — the Samsung Galaxy Fold7 — was sitting on the back seat of the car that was already driving away.
The Samsung Galaxy Fold7 that was left in the car.
Image via Syazwan Bahri/SAYSI rushed back out, but the car was already gone.
Normally, I do a quick pocket check before getting out of any ride. This time, my growling stomach and the excitement of lunch got the better of me.
I sprinted back inside to find my colleague who booked the ride
The plan seemed simple: call the driver, explain that I'd left the phone behind, ask him to turn around, then hand him a tip for his trouble.
Except it wasn't that simple.
When my colleague tried calling the driver through the app, the call wouldn't even go through. It didn't ring. It didn't connect.
I asked my colleague to keep spamming the in-app chat while I rushed back outside, desperately scanning the road in the slim hope that I'd dropped the phone instead of leaving it in the car.
Nothing.
No reply. No missed call. No phone in sight.
By the time I sat back down, my appetite had completely disappeared.
Despite skipping breakfast that morning, I couldn't bring myself to eat the food in front of me. Every passing minute felt like an eternity as I glanced at my watch.
My biggest fear wasn't that the driver would keep the phone. It was that his next passenger would spot the Fold7 on the back seat and quietly slip it into a bag before anyone noticed.
Then it hit me: Wait… I can track it from my watch!
I quickly turned on the personal hotspot on my other phone, connected my Samsung Galaxy Watch8 Classic, and opened SmartThings Find.
There it was.
My Fold7 was slowly making its way along the Damansara highway in near real time.
Tracking the Fold7 in near real time.
Image via Syazwan Bahri/SAYSHere's the thing that blew my mind: the Fold7 didn't even have a SIM card inside. It wasn't connected to cellular data at all.
Instead, Samsung's offline finding network works by quietly pinging other nearby devices via Bluetooth. It builds a secret relay map, pinpointing the location even when the device is completely offline.
Just as I was tracking the little icon on my wrist, the driver finally noticed his messages
He told us he was taking a quick break near a petrol station down the road and would head back to us immediately.
Knowing the Damansara area well, I knew exactly which station he meant. The knot in my stomach finally began to loosen. Sure enough, the driver pulled up about twenty minutes later and handed my foldable smartphone back through the window.
My colleagues and I were immensely relieved. In an age where we constantly hear about lost belongings never being recovered, it was heartwarming to see that honesty is still alive and well.
I apologised profusely for my carelessness, thanked him from the bottom of my heart, and handed him a generous token of appreciation.
Looking back, the whole situation felt like something straight out of a James Bond film
Watching my phone's icon slowly creep closer and closer to our location on a tiny smartwatch display was equal parts nerve-wracking and absurdly cool.
It is a great reminder of why these offline tracking features are so important on modern wearables and smartphones. Even brands like Apple have built location-finding features into many of their devices, including the MacBook.
Here's an example of Apple's Find My Device in action.
Image via Syazwan Bahri/SAYSMistakes happen, especially when you're hungry and distracted, but having a wrist-bound locator saved me from a very expensive headache.
