Last night mid-way through my train ride home i had a sudden realisation, i had no idea where my phone was and I left the office with it, OUCH. The though patterns started to retrace, etc. I got off the train a stop early and shot to my parents house to use their phone to try call it, unfortunately the battery on my phone was dead.
Sitting at my parents house I started to realise where it got to and convinced my mum to drive me 40 odd minutes back to work and wait for me while I looked everywhere for it. You can be assured I didn’t find it and in a way I’m kind of retrospectively happy about it.
I slept like crap last night, not because I lost an iPhone (that’s laughable), but because I couldn’t stop thinking of all the things connected to my iPhone i needed to be changing passwords on or watching like a hawk. The list was huge, my phone has been seriously connected to my life since the XDA Atom. In the end I gave up and resigned to changing things that matter and preying someone would use the public services like Facebook, last.fm or Twitter.
Everyone kept saying to me “Don’t you have that app that helps you find your fone?” “Dont you have mobile me?” my response was simple “None of that helps when it’s flat” and even if it wasn’t i would’ve been able call it and find it anyway, unless of course they threw the sim. At no point amongst any of this banter did I remember that I could just log straight into my Apps4Rent WebMail, hit options and wipe my device, had I realised this I would’ve done it last night.
This is the greatest feature ever, who cares about finding your phone i was too busy caring about every ounce of what my life that was on there. The hardware was replaceable, someone having someone elses pesronal data is not a good thing in my books.
So I’d been calling it all today (and so had friends and family it seemed) and finally at about 10 past 5 it came on and someone answered, OMFG! Not only does this guy have my phone, he lives around the corner and rides the exact same train stops as me. We often cross paths at the train station and even ride the same train, had I _NOT_ gone to my Mum’s house, this guy would’ve walked right passed me about 10 minutes later while i waited for my friends, with my phone in his bag unknowing that it belonged to me.
I put a call block on my phone last night as I didn’t want un-necessary calls going out and the first thing he tried to do when the phone powered up was call entries like “Dad”. When they didn’t work, he went to the start of my phone book and tried to call the first person and a few seconds later Chris called him and we organised to get the phone back. Long story short, he came around in his car about 20 minutes later with my phone and I don’t think i’ve ever felt so happy, relieved or thankfull. I owe this guy something and he’ll get it along with worlds of good karma. The hard part is i’m going to be so happy everytime this guy turns up anywhere near me for the next few weeks, his presence is just going to remind me that people are still amazing.
Some points to take away:
- What good are these “find the phone” services when theres no sim/battery?
- Does chaning the password on my exchange/mobile me acct, stop the find the phone/remote wipe from working?
- If i’d done a remote wipe, he’d never been able to have seen who the phone belonged too, he’d never have been able to try call Dad, he’d never know who was calling when we rang, it may not have been callable anymore?
- Good people still exist
- I think i have a guardian angel watching closely or something like that….