This Court granted certiorari to the Court of Appeals to consider whether that Court properly determined that a police officer’s search of a cell phone incident to arrest was lawful. See Hawkins v. State , 307 Ga. App. 253 704 SE2d 886 2011. Finding that the majority opinion of the Court of Appeals reached the correct conclusion, we affirm. This case arises from the arrest of Haley Hawkins for various crimes, including an attempted violation of the Georgia Controlled Substances Act following an exchange of telephone text messages between Hawkins and a law enforcement officer who posed as another individual. After agreeing by text to meet the officer, ostensibly to purchase illegal drugs, Hawkins arrived in her car at the appointed place; there, the officer observed her entering data into her cell phone, and he contemporaneously received a text message stating that she had arrived. The officer approached Hawkins’s vehicle and placed her under arrest; her vehicle was searched and her cell phone was found inside her purse. The arresting officer searched the cell phone for the text messages he had exchanged with Hawkins, and then downloaded and printed them. Hawkins moved the trial court to suppress evidence of these text messages as the product of an unreasonable search and seizure because it was accomplished without the authority of a warrant; the motion was denied, and the Court of Appeals permitted an interlocutory appeal, and affirmed the trial court.1
As the majority opinion of the Court of Appeals correctly noted, as a general rule, “searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment, subject only to a few specifically established and well-defined exceptions.” Katz v. United States , 389 U. S. 347, 357 88 SC 507, 19 LE2d 576 1967. “Among the exceptions to the warrant requirement is a search incident to lawful arrest.” Arizona v. Gant , 556 U. S. 332, 129 SC 1710, 1716 II, 173 LE2d 485 2009. Hawkins , supra at 255 1.2
