Can a turned-off phone still be tracked? This is true, but there's no need to worry.

In any industry, for niche brands to gain consumers' attention, "telling a story" is often a crucial point.

For example, in the smartphone industry, everyone knows that leading brands have absolute advantages in terms of resources and shipment volume. Therefore, they often "monopolize" the most advanced chips, batteries, screens, cameras, and even the materials of the phone body. As a result, for many other manufacturers with a lack of supply - chain competitiveness, who are doomed to use poorer configurations at higher costs to make products, "telling a story" and "creating concepts" have become almost the only viable way to survive.

For instance, in the past, our San Yi Life has criticized several models that claim to be "environment - friendly" but actually sell at high prices with outdated hardware specifications.

We have also pointed out that now that leading manufacturers have mastered high - energy - density batteries and popularized body protection technology, those traditional, thick and heavy "niche rugged phones" have objectively begun to lose their market share.

Of course, there are also some high - price, low - configuration models that rely on difficult - to - use open - source systems and have almost no built - in services but claim to be "helpful for protecting privacy", which are one of the targets we often criticize.

Recently, we've discovered another similar "miracle phone"

Recently, a brand called "Unplugged" has a new model that is a typical example of "good at storytelling but the product is not that good".

What kind of product is it? Simply put, it is equipped with a MediaTek Dimensity 1200 processor, an 8GB + 256GB storage combination, a 6.67 - inch OLED screen, and a rear triple - camera setup consisting of a 108 - megapixel main camera, an 8 - megapixel ultra - wide - angle camera, and a 5 - megapixel macro secondary camera, as well as a 13 - megapixel front - facing camera.

Meanwhile, this model runs a customized AOSP open - source system without Google services. Its system has a built - in app store that claims to "not track users" and an open - source browser with an anti - advertising function. In addition, Unplugged also claims that this product has a "system - level firewall", which performs better than leading brands' models in blocking tracking behaviors and allows users to "monitor the data activities of each app".

Obviously, this is another model that sells the concept of "privacy protection". However, its high price of $989 and the monthly subscription service fee of $12.99 (including antivirus, private chat, encrypted cloud storage, and encrypted network connection) tell us that it's really a "rip - off".

But this niche model seems to have some merits

Does this mean that these low - configuration, high - price phones targeting niche markets have no redeeming features at all? Not necessarily.

Take Unplugged's model as an example. There are two details worthy of praise. One is that it supports microSD card expansion. Although we've mentioned that at present, microSD cards are much slower than the built - in flash memory of phones, so they are not used to install apps and truly "expand capacity", but only to store media files such as songs and pictures, and may still slow down the phone to some extent. However, for phones with low configurations, providing cheap space to store more media files is not a bad thing.

Another detail that caught our attention is that Unplugged claims that this product has a special circuit - breaker design, which "can prevent the phone from being monitored and tracked when it's turned off".

At first glance, this seems like nonsense. After all, how can a turned - off phone be monitored and tracked? But if you pay attention to the technological progress in the consumer electronics field in recent years and the promotions of some leading brands, you'll realize that things are not that simple.

Why do we say so? In most people's perception, "turning off" a device seems to mean closing all apps and cutting off the power supply to all hardware. When turning it on next time, both the hardware and software need to be re - initialized, re - loaded, and re - run.

"Incomplete shutdown" has become a common problem in the industry

Let's take the computer as an example. Its principle is relatively complex, but understanding it will help us better understand the current situation of smartphones.

Actually, since Windows 8, Microsoft has introduced a feature called "Fast Startup". In essence, when the computer is shut down, it writes the running states of some currently running system services and drivers in the memory into a cache file and saves it on the hard drive. When the computer is turned on next time, the system reads this cache from the hard drive into the memory, so these services and drivers can "continue running" without being re - initialized, which speeds up the startup process.

The official website of a well - known computer brand clearly states that after enabling "Fast Startup", the computer cannot be completely shut down.

However, when the "Fast Startup" feature is enabled, the computer doesn't completely cut off the power supply to all hardware when shutting down. Instead, it actually enters a state similar to "deep sleep". This causes the computer to consume power slowly even when it's "turned off", but the advantage is that the next startup will be significantly faster. This is because the hardware saves a lot of self - testing and initialization time, and the software can directly resume from the cache without having to be fully reopened.

For desktop computers, it's very easy to "verify" the effect of Fast Startup. You just need to completely unplug the power socket after shutting down the computer, then plug it back in and turn on the computer. You'll find that the "Fast Startup" temporarily fails. Usually, you'll notice that the time it takes for the computer to turn on the screen and enter the system is significantly longer than usual (when you only shut down the computer without unplugging the socket and cutting off the power).

Similar to computers, smartphones also have a similar "Fast Startup" technology, which emerged around 2011 - 2012. Since then, the "shutdown" of many phones is not as thorough as people think. Especially as replaceable batteries have been gradually phased out, in the past, users could ensure that the phone was completely "truly turned off" by removing the battery. But since the battery is difficult to remove directly, users often have no way to tell whether the phone is "truly turned off".

Of course, this doesn't mean that phone manufacturers are deliberately hiding something. In many cases, users with a little observation ability can also tell from some functions that today's phones are "not completely turned off".

For example, many models claim that their "anti - theft and retrieval" function is still effective even after the phone is turned off, and the phone can still be located. This is achieved by keeping a part of the low - power communication modules (usually Bluetooth and UWB) working continuously after the phone is "turned off". Therefore, it's not surprising that some users are worried that their phones "might be tracked even when turned off".

Should we be worried? Yes, but not about privacy

Since both computers and phones today have the phenomenon of "incomplete shutdown", should ordinary users be worried? In fact, it depends on the specific situation.

On the one hand, if you're worried that incomplete "shutdown" may lead to privacy leakage, we advise you to rest assured. Whether it's a computer or a phone, even if the so - called "anti - theft" function is enabled, the positioning function in the "turned - off" state is achieved only through passive mechanisms such as the Bluetooth network. These devices can't connect to the Internet and send personal information when turned off, nor can they be "accessed remotely" to retrieve information from the internal storage when turned off.

On the other hand, if you're not worried about privacy leakage caused by incomplete shutdown (which is impossible), but about the power consumption problem caused by these "Fast Startup" and "positioning when turned off" functions, it's really a realistic issue. Especially for devices that have been used for one or two years or even longer and whose batteries are worn out, it's really annoying when a laptop or phone that is "not completely turned off" loses a lot of power after a few days and can't even be turned on due to power loss.

This article is from the WeChat official account "San Yi Life" (ID: IT - 3eLife), author: San Yi Jun. It is published by 36Kr with permission.