Daily, hundreds of millions of people use their phones in their everyday lives, and many of them become victims of a variety of illicit activities.With the ongoing expansion of the smart phone market, the likelihood of their usage in illegal acts has also increased. Nowadays, mobile phones come with a diverse set of software applications, new technologies, and operating systems. Advances in
... [Show full abstract] mobile phone semiconductor technology, as well as an increase in computational power, haveallowed mobile phones to become more efficient while remaining tiny enough to fit in a pocket. As a result, examining evidence via a mobile phone becomes difficult for a forensic investigator. The capture of information from mobile devices is routinely used as persuasive proof, and it's become an important part of forensic investigations.To obtain meaningful data, a thorough understanding of forensic tools and their characteristics is essential. The nature of some of the newest types of information that can become possible evidence on mobile phones is examined in this paper. It also covers several newer technologies and their effectiveness in collecting phone-based evidences.This study also assesses mobile device characteristics, mobile forensic investigation steps, and distinct mobile forensic technologies along with their limitationsand future scope.Keywords:Mobile Phone Forensics, Emerging Technology, Criminal Activities, Digital Evidences, Forensic Investigation1. Introduction: Daily, hundreds of millions of people use their phones in their everyday lives, and many of them become victims of a variety of illicit activities.With the ongoing expansion of the smart phone market, the likelihood of their usage in illegal acts has also increased[1]. Nowadays, mobile phones come with a diverse set of software applications, new technologies, and operating systems.Mobile phones have been a part of our daily lives since with the launch of"bag and brick" cell phonesinmid-1990s[1, 2]. Advances in mobile phone semiconductor technology, as well as an increase in computational power, have allowed mobile phones to become more efficient while remaining tiny enough to fit in a pocket.With the launch of smart-phones and growing upto fifth generation networks, currently there are over 5.31 billion unique mobile phone users who access their mobile devices daily[3]. Also, along with the calling facility, an increase in the free social messaging applications like WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Facebook etc., is one of the significant elementthat have contributed to the mobile phone's widespread use.Internet users are rising exponentially at the rate of 4.0 percent each year, equal to more than half a million new users per day[3, 4].As the increase in the number of use of mobile applications,the related security threats have