Li locates this community with the phone's positioning function.

A Chinese man surnamed Li and his friends had their phones and other belongings stolen on Aug. 1 in Vietnam. On the morning of the day they were supposed to return to China, Li and his friends went to a beach to watch the sunrise in Nha Trang, a well-known tourist site in Vietnam. However, the bag where they had put all their phones, wallets and ID cards was stolen while they were taking photos. Their belongings were worth a total of about 60,000 yuan ($9,037).

One of Li's friends, surnamed Yang, later located their lost property using the "Find My iPhone" app, a program that uses GPS to locate lost and stolen devices. After tracking the phone to a residential area, they stopped in front of the gate of a house.

"I'm sure our lost phones were in that house because I heard beeping sounds when I tried to set off the [phone alarm] with another phone," Yang explained.

Local police investigate the case.

The group later contacted local police for help, but the people in the house refused to open the door, even during a police inquiry. Li later tried to reclaim the stolen goods with the help of a translator from the Chinese consulate, but the thief refused to return the items even after he admitted to stealing them.

Even though Li and his friends located the lost property, their lack of hard evidence left them with no choice but to return to China. Now, the Chinese consulate is negotiating with Vietnamese diplomats and urging the local police to solve the case as soon as possible.