Last night, I lost and then found my iPhone 3GS. You hear stories about lost phones all the time, just look at your Twitter stream for a few weeks. This time, however, there was a happy ending: I recovered my iPhone almost before I could really miss it.
I setup my iPhone 3GS with MobileMe and Find My iPhone tracking virtually the instant I got it in June 2009, but until last night it's been nothing but a curiosity. I knew I could remotely lock the phone, send an alert to it, or even remote wipe it, but thankfully I hadn't had to track it.
Commuting home late on NJ Transit, the phone must've dropped out of my pocket. I'd used it to check the schedule for the train's arrival time at my home station. When I got home, I started putting the stuff in my pockets away: Keys, check. Wallet, check. Rail pass, check. iPhone, iPhone, ummm iPhone? A sense of panic set in, but then I remembered that I could check in to Mobile Me online. And there it was, a steady blue dot on top of a train track at the depot. That meant it was probably still on the train, and not on some sticky-fingered person's credenza.
Thankfully, the folks working the night shift at the NJ Transit Depot were professional and this was an all-too-common situation. The manager's PC was still using Internet Explorer 6, so I couldn't show him the map online, but they cross-referenced the train I was on, and found the equipment on the depot grounds. A quick call to my phone later, and the foreman found my iPhone wedged in the seat I had ridden in earlier. MobileMe just saved me $299 in iPhone replacement costs.
Since Find My iPhone is free for iPhone 4, iPad, and current iPod Touch users, it would be silly not to set it up. Older devices like my iPhone 3GS and the older iPod touch models still need to sign up for MobileMe, but it's worth it if you lose and recover your precious iPhone.
Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and feature phone users shouldn't feel left out: Jamie Lendino wrote an article earlier this year with the various ways of tracking your lost cell phone.