Earlier quoted context omitted.
Believe what you want but at least read it through first. This isn't about powering a cell phone via wireless power and make it connect to a cell tower this is about inducing enough power into the cell phone's RF parts to make it modulate the signal sufficiently to be able to be picked up. Essentially this isn't that much different than the passive wifi or any other backscatter communication based system. I've seen t…
As I read it, that's a fine way to detect the presence of a cell phone. It might be able to discriminate between several models of cell phones. But it will not be able to identify a specific cell phone. Am I misreading your statements?
Yes, I said it was used to track cell phones in low density areas back when they were simply enough for this trick to work, what I assume is that if someone back then had a cell phone/radio phone/sat phone or anything similar with a susceptible transmitter in the middle of nowhere-stan you could probably identify them via other means, or at least be able to classify them sufficiently.