According to a report in the Evening Star newspaper, officers in Halstead were notified by a woman that her iPhone was stolen from a local pub on February 20.
Thanks to the app, the police were able to log into the owner's account and track the GPS location of the stolen handset to an address in Earls Colne.
A 52-year-old man has reportedly been arrested on suspicion of theft, although the local paper says that, after admitting stealing the handset, the man was given a police caution.
The paper quotes Halstead neighbourhood policing Sargeant Jason Snow as saying that the 'find my phone' application could help police trace your phone if it is stolen, although he noted that the app relies on the owner creating a simple account to activate it beforehand.
"We received a second report of an iPhone being stolen a few days after this case but because the victim had not activated the system we were'nt able to trace the phone so quickly", he said.
"We appeal to owners of smart phones and other devices like the iPad to activate the application as soon as they can", he added.
Infosecurity notes that `Find my iPhone' is a free app from Apple that requires users to be running iOS 4.2 or later. The software is free to register and runs on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.