As the taxi from JFK pulled up in front of my apartment I felt my iPhone vibrating in my pocket, but didn’t answer it since I was trying to pay the cabbie. I walked inside, reached in my pocket to see who called, and realized I didn’t have it. The damn thing vibrated itself out of my front jeans pocket.
I’ve reported it to the taxi company, but it’s probably gone for good. In the meantime, if you need to reach me email is the best option. I can call you back out on Skype as necessary.
Now the question is: do I buy a refurb 8GB from Apple or do I get a cheapo phone and wait until the probable 3G iPhone release in June?
Update: My phone is apparently waiting for me at JFK. I am a lucky bastard. Not that I got my phone back, per se, but that I found two helpful, honest people: Ophelia at the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission, who tracked down my cabbie Mike, who in turn had the foresight to capture both the name and badge number of the Port Authority officer who did not turn in my phone to the Lost & Found until this morning.
The lesson, should you lose your gear in a NYC cab, is to make sure you have the cab number. It’s easy when you come from an airport because it’s on that little slip of paper they hand you, but otherwise you’d have to write it down when you got inside. But if I hadn’t had that, Ophelia couldn’t have tracked down Mike. Without him and the receipt he got from the officer who took his sweet time turning my phone in, I might have been out of luck.
I’ve got to make an appointment to go pick up my phone today. As soon as I get it, I think I need to send Ophelia some flowers. (And find something good for Mike.)
I say you go retro for a while. It’ll be like using a TRS-80 after being exposed to a Mac for the first time.
get a motofone f3 for $35 and wait for 3g.
I’ve been using a Motorola F3 for over a month now. It’s as basic as you can find a phone now. Very basic display (not even dot matrix), no Bluetooth, very basic SMS ability, contacts stored on the SIM card. It’s meant for developing markets. My model is 850/1900MHz GSM, so it works pretty much just in the Americas. The instructions were in Spanish and Portugese.
I switched over out of curiosity from a T-Mobile MDA (HTC Wizard). I really haven’t missed it.
A friend knocked the F3 into some water on Friday. It was totally submerged for a good 20 seconds. After letting it dry, it was back in perfect working order by Sunday.
With the extra-thinness and e-paper display, it feels like owning the infancy of the future.
http://www.amazon.com/Motorola-MOTOFONE-F3-Black-Unlocked/dp/B0013A7KMW/
What about ‘get a replacement under the terms of my handset insurance’?
For something like an iPhone, I’d say insurance cover’s a must.
i would have the second the motofone f3. best reception of any phone that i have ever owned. one word of caution: on the at&t voicemail notifications don’t work. you are notified when you miss a call and voicemail works fine you just aren’t notified when you have a pending message.
more importantly, how and why did you have that overpriced, 3 pound brink in your front jeans pocket?
should have taken the airtrain…
Here’s hope: I was in Chicago for only a couple of days, and on the first day, I lost my cell phone. I wasn’t even sure I lost it in the cab, but it was either there or the hotel lobby. I left a few messages with both the cab company and the hotel, and the day I was supposed to leave, a co-worker that I was with got a call from someone who’d called my number, and the cabbie was trying to get ahold of me to return my phone. He brought me my phone and took me to the train station, and I tipped him an extra $20 (I thought that was fair since it was really a fairly cheap phone, and I was only trying to save myself the hassle of buying another).
Sent you an email about an LG i’ve got sitting around, but I’d have to throw in a vote for the F3 as well.
Also saw this thread on slickdeals:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=758460
I’m using an F3 until 3g – it’s a pretty sweet little phone!!
Joel: It’s stories like this that make me glad I bought my sticky silicone case for my iPhone. It’s not really sticky–it’s just so rubbery that it gets a lot of friction in your pocket. It will never fall out. I highly recommend one for your next iPhone. Here’s the case I got:
http://www.dlo.com/Products/jj_iPhone_Prod.tpl?command=showpage&cart=
you can also use any ATT GO Phone. I broke my phone just past warranty, picked up a go phone for $10 at Best Buy and put my SIM in. Works just fine as a basic phone just for calls/texts.
Joel, perhaps you left it in this girl’s hotel room?
http://www.girlwithaonetrackmind.blogspot.com/
Get a Nokia of some sort that uses the Symbian 60 OS and check out all the software that’s available. You might re-think your iPhone.
I may have found it! A really awesome lady named Ophelia at the Taxi & Limo department tracked down the driver who said he left it at Port Authority. I’ve yet to make contact with the driver (and the people I can find at PA say they don’t know what I’m talking about), but there is hope!
For your sake, I hope “left it at Port Authority” isn’t a euphemism for “sold it on eBay.”
You can practically smell Joel’s excitement at buying an iPhone all over again. It’s just a PHONE!!!!
Set ‘em up and knock ‘em down, Artbot.
You could just blog about it until apple give you a new one?
They wouldn’t give me a new one and I wouldn’t take it if they did.
Interesting development: Mike the Cabbie, who found my phone in his back seat, turned it in at JFK to Port Authority Officer Gonzalez around 1PM yesterday. Gonzalez just took the phone and was about to walk off, but Mike the Cabbie, having had his doubts that other phones he’d turned into Port Authority officers in the past had ever made it to lost and found, got a receipt from Gonzalez with a signature.
I finally got the Port Authority Lost & Found to email me back today. Guess what’s not been turned in? Fortunately, thanks to Mike the Cabbie’s foresight, I may still have a chance at seeing my phone. The woman at PA L&F said a sergeant is coming by, hopefully with the phone, at 10:30AM.
@Artbot, speaking of which, I can smell the jealousy.
Losing a cheapo celphone is one thing. Losing an iPhone is like losing your telephone, your PDA, your iPod, and a surrogate laptop all at the same time.
Law and Order: iPhone edition..
If you’re still looking for something suitable to get Mike, why not get the refurbed phone or one of the ones suggested above for a decent price and give it to him? He might get a kick out of it. :p
#22 – If I wanted an iPhone I’d buy one. I have no use for one, especially with a design as broken as that (sorry, the UI doesn’t redeem it for me). I have a “book” that I keep all my contacts in. The batteries never die and it doesn’t break if I drop it. I have a “camera” for taking pictures. When I’m not at the computer for my job for 12 hours a day, I really have no need or use for anything other than a minimalist phone, which I only have because I have a 2 year old and need to stay in touch with mom.
Some tech actually helps us live our lives better, or more accurately, more conveniently, but most doesn’t. But people are attracted to shiny new objects, so this ridiculous product cycling is unlikely to abate any time soon, if ever.