Phone home: the lucky Londoners reunited with their long lost iPhones

You may have idiotically lost your device on a drunken night out but now it is smart enough to find its way back. Phoebe Luckhurst retrieves your tales

In the hierarchy of loss, phones rank above bank cards and passports, although below parents. An elderly great-aunt will probably lose to your Samsung (I mean, really, you hardly knew her); the loss of a much-loved family pet is devastating but certainly not as inconvenient as leaving your mobile on the N55. So many peaceful mornings-after-the-night-before are shattered by the holler of the careless, frustrated and hungover: “But how do I report my phone as missing when I DON’T HAVE A PHONE?!”

Railing at the previous night’s intemperance, you post a sorry Facebook status advising that people contact you “on this thing for now”, and borrow a mate’s mobile to buzz your network, only to be told that you’re screwed, in the flat, disinterested timbre of a man who hates his job and all the people it brings him into contact with.

Usually, the ultimate result is that you chin 200 for a new one and — with the passage of time — it becomes a funny story you tell as evidence of how mad with it you got one time. You tend to omit the bit where you cried.

But one time out of every thousand (nb: not a real stat) — the jolt of bereavement is countered a few hours later with a jolt of heady euphoria. Someone has found your phone! Your phone is being returned! Your phone is coming home!

Last weekend, a Hackney-dwelling colleague was on a holiday down in Putney. She left the pub, made the long journey back east, and then when she got home realised she didn’t have her iPhone. By this point it was late and — assuming she’d probably dropped it somewhere in the transport nexus — she decided to leave it till morning, when she began the sapping post-mortem. In a half-hearted flash of inspiration, she logged onto Find My iPhone — and discovered hers was still being a dirty stop-out in Putney! Her other half sent a text advising any kind Samaritan to give him a call — and a few hours later, a lovely chap did. A reunion was arranged — and she said the most pleasing thing was watching the progress of her phone on the Find My Phone app as it made its walk of shame across the capital. Moral of the story: keep it in your own backyard.

A friend thought she had dropped her phone down the loo at a festival — and presumed that was most certainly that (phones don’t tend to be resuscitated when they’ve drowned in a Portaloo). In fact, she’d dropped it elsewhere and another festival-goer found it and brought it home. Shy or hapless, he passed it over to his mother to deal with — who rang my friend’s mum to inform her of her child’s loss. An exchange was arranged. Convoluted, certainly, but a veritable happy ending.

However, not everyone gets their fairytale ending: another mate (seeing a trend developing here) is on her third iPhone of the year, and sent me an email detailing five separate phone-loss sagas. All involved alcohol and most involved public transport. The upside is that she can pinpoint the real reason why losing a phone is such a ball-ache for Londoners: “It ruins any budding relationships or liaisons,” she says, “if that’s the only method of contact you have. Then you’re forced to endure the tension of not being able to text said romantic interest or know if they’ve texted you. When every text is analysed and even the time between messages is hugely significant, it’s a big deal. In the early days, most new flings haven’t yet become Facebook friends and it would just be weird to track them down and message them.” Ah, the muddy politics of dating.

So how to maximise your chances of having your own happy ending (in several senses)? Signing up for phone retrieval apps such as Find My iPhone is a good place to start — though it’s certainly not a guaranteed safeguard, and even if you track yours down you might not get it back if the person who’s got it is a wrong ’un — but frankly, you might as well. Call all the places you went last night and also the local police stations in those areas if you were hopping across the city. Get a mate to call it (if it’s switched on you’re more likely to get it back — it’s when it’s turned off that you shoud worry) and also send a text advising anyone who’s picked it up to get in touch. Keep the text short so the person can read the whole thing without needing to unlock your phone (applies particularly to iPhones). Also make sure your device is fully juiced before a night out.

Alternatively, as my unlucky friend notes: “I wish microbags would come back so I could have it about my person at all times. People were really on to something when they had belt clips for their Nokias.”

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