[Q] Tracking a lost phone - When thief is not braindead

I checked out various apps which can locate lost phone(after stolen).
All work on the premise of installing app remotely from google play, and then sending SMS to your phone etc.,

However, there are a few caveats(with all such apps, and others too). they work for brain dead thieves.


Professional thiefs will throw away your sim card, and then put in a new sim(prepaid sims freely available).

For security, the owner of phone will obviously change the gmail password, right?

So if thief factory resets and wipes data, and then logs on with a different google play account, can you still track it?
Is there any app which allows to do the same?

Casual thieves can be caught, but what if somebody does a full wipe?
I think google tracks phones using device ID. Is it possible to track phone through google, even if android account(google account) being used on the phone is different?

Need help please.