How Stupid Can a Smartphone Make You Feel?

Today smartphones are everywhere. Everyone except for my mom and 90 year old grandmother have a smartphone, wants a smartphone or will soon have a smartphone. I myself had been an iPhone user for only several months when I lost the iPhone at Walmart.

How stupid does losing your smartphone make you feel?

I have already missed a few appointments because I did not get notified since my smart iPhone was not able to alert me about my appointments.

I also feel very disconnected due to the loss of my iPhone for a few reasons. First, all my contact numbers had been stored on the iPhone, and I did not back up my contact list. Secondly, due to the ease of staying connected with the iPhone, I  have not been posting on the various social media sites such as Facebook, FourSquare, and Twitter nearly as frequently due to the loss of my iPhone. It really is sad to find out how dependent upon these devices we can become.

What Can You Do When You Lose Your iPhone?

When I discovered that I had lost my cell, I first called Walmart and asked if anyone had returned an iPhone. You just never know, there are honest people out there, but there are also many dishonest people out there. Next, I tried unsuccessfully to contact AT&T, but since it was late Sunday afternoon, there were no AT&T stores that were open, and the customer support was not answering. The following day however, I went to the AT&T store and got the phone disconnected and got a new sim card. I then went and purchased an AT&T  Go phone which I am now using as my cell..I really do hate it.

I have called Walmart multiple times to see if the missing iPhone has shown up. I also reported it as stolen to the local authorities, as I would not want it to show up having been used in some crime and not reported it stolen. I also saw online that one guy did report his stolen, and he got a call from the police later on in the week to come and pick up his phone. Recovery,  I believe is not too common.

When I was at the AT&T store, I became aware of Apple’s MobileMe program, for $99 per year, which allows you to be able to track the were about’s of your phone via GPS tracking, do a mobile erase of the data, and if the phone is on silent, enables you to override it and send out a really noisy sound to annoy those who now have your iPhone. But alas, you can not sign up for the MobileMe program after you have lost your iPhone.

Finding out about the MobileMe program after loosing my phone, really annoys me. Apple has the ability to track one of their phones, to register a phone and make it obsolete to thieves, but they choose to capitalize on the service instead of protecting their loyal iPhone costumers. My iPhone was only a 3G iPhone, so it only will run me around $300 to replace it. What do you think the odds are of that happening? As much as I like the iPhone, I am not going to run out and get another one.

Apple, like all the other smartphone manufacturers, has the GPS technology to make stolen phones unvaluable to thieves, but they choose not to do the right thing. Currently, any thief can still use my iPhone as a 8GB iPod or even as an iTouch. I have even read that cell phone companies must allow a cell phone to be unlocked for use by another carrier after it has been in use for only a year. I am not exactly sure when that would be since my phone was refurbished.(yea I try to buy used when possible)

Lastly, as the result of doing this post, I learned about and then  I  registered the lost iPhone with itrackmobile.com which means my missing iPhone is registered as lost or stolen with the authorities. So when the person who has possession of the missing iPhone tries to use it, I will get notified. I figure the guys at the AT&T store were not going to tell me about this as this is not one of the services that they are trying to sell.

Who can register with iTrackMobile.com for Free?

• Any iPhone owner can and should register their iPhone for free, preferably before the iPhone is lost.
• Owners of iPods both classic and nano.
• Owners of iTouch.

What SmartPhone now?

I will be getting another SmartPhone in the near future, as I really need one to do sales for our latest venture LocalMobileConnect.com, which  is key, but I need to do a little research first before I purchase a costly smartphone.  I am not sure I want to get a phone that uses the Android operating system or wait for the release of the Windows Phone 7 Series. For now, I will have to get comfortable using the old T-mobile BlackBerry,  once I get it unlocked.

Do you have a smartphone that you would recommend I try?

Written by Pixelhead on March 23rd, 2010 with 41 comments.
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