Unfortunately, I think in some aspects, television shows and movies (and likely some internet urban legends as well) have colored our thoughts on what is actually possible with cell phone technology. Most local police departments have a limited ability to do much, even with cell phone records from the service provider.
Deleted text messages can be retrieved with the right tools and the best IT forensics people, but that's only if they have the actual phone in their hands. I don't have a link but was told this by a local detective that helped me when my underage daughter was being harassed by an older person - and being sent texts and images that she had deleted. And yes, they did find things on her phone that you wouldn't have seen if you just pulled up the text logs or image gallery.
Pings are not hard to understand but I've seen so many people describe them differently that I can see where the confusion comes in. Hubby and I used to have these apps on our phones that track our pings. Signals sent from our phones to the closest cell phone tower. We jokingly called it the Stalker App but we had them because we'd both had accidents on the highway in the winter and it was something that made us both feel better, knowing we could login and see where each other was last, in case something happened. Thankfully it never did.
That was before google updated their GPS location reporting. Once we switched that on, on our phones, we no longer needed that app. I'm honestly not sure which technologies (pings, gps, magic unicorn sprinkles, etc.) it employs to get the accuracy as spot on as it is, but it truly is amazing. Once when hubby was gone much longer than I expected him to be while out running errands, I logged into his google account and tracked him (literally) to a dvd store in Stratford. I texted him and just said "put that one back, we've already seen it and it was really stupid". He replied with "LOL!! How did you know where I was??" I reminded him we'd both switched on google location services.
That service wasn't available in May of 2013 with the accuracy it has now, and I had the same exact phone Tim had. At that time, all it showed was phone pings, and it really wasn't all that accurate, which is why we opted for the Stalker App (no idea what it was really called, but it was pretty good).
These are just the tools the general public has available. I have to assume LE's tools are much more advanced - but - without access to accounts or the actual phones, what they can do is rather limited. Right now, if I went missing with my phone, all anyone would have to do is login to my google account, go to location history, and literally everywhere my phone has been, shows up on the map. Literally, as in Canadian Tire, Zehrs, dentist office, etc. It's pretty awesome, really.
