Lost my N900
 

I have had about 20 odd mobile phones and in that about 14 are smartphones. Even today I have N900(had), Xperia X1, 3GS, myTouch 3G, an old O2 Atom, HTC touch and a Blackjack.

In all, I have never lost a mobile. So yesterday after reaching home from the airport I noticed that my precious N900 is missing. Frantic calls to the airport's lost and found and the taxi people yielded nothing.

The first 30 mins was the worst I have felt in a long time. Felt totally violated, the pictures, the contacts, the email, the phone. Out of habit I never do online banking on the phone so that's one off the list.

So I changed all the passwords, deactivated nuevasync to remove calendar and contacts from the phone. Changed all the IM passwords. Then realized this phone is a bigger nuisance to loose than many others. For example in an Android phone all I would have to do is change my google password. I hardly use any IM app and don't browse much to warrant a 'save password'. But this phone would log me in all the messengers as soon as its switched on. uh

T-Mobile said they can't do anything with the IMEI number, so paid $20 and got a new SIM today. Now, after the dust has settled. i need to find myself a phone. All the other phones won't have 3G with TMo and I hate the myTouch 3G

So I just finished ordering N900 from Amazon now (I actually made my friend stand in line @ the NY Nokia Store on its first day of release and get it to me). I would have probably got the N1 or waited for the HD2 (ha!) but the recent updates to the OS made me stick with N900.

Just wanted to share my exp and thoughts about this with fellow N9rs

Re: Lost my N900
 

argh :( too bad man....

Did u try to call ur own number when u realize that u lost ur phone?

i hope someone with a good heart has found it and saw your email... who knows maybe he/she will contact u?

Good luck pal and............ N900 FTW! :P

Hard to live without it now :P

Re: Lost my N900
 

Thanks, I kept calling for about an hour or so. full ring and nobody picked up. What I'm wondering now is, the phone would have died by now (battery) so the chance that someone has the micro charger to charge it and find my contacts are slim.

Anyways, getting the New one tomorrow. Now have to get a screen protector. Any suggestions? I hate the Zagg one. I was actually looking to replace it.

Re: Lost my N900
 

Wow man thats sooo sad

Thank God i never lost a mobile in my life...

This reminded me when i lost my Sanddisk Memory Stick (1GB)
I bought it for about 130$ when it first came out
I was reaaally depressed...etc, I felt like puking (LOL 4 real)

Anyway i hope you get another one ASAP...

Re: Lost my N900
 

this sucks, man... sorry

goes to show that password protection (of the phone) is a good idea, although if it was on when you lost it, it doesn't matter that much

Re: Lost my N900
 

Lucky you to still have money to get new one.

I've never lost a phone either, just broken one. I use lock code on my N900 in case it gets into wrong hands.

Re: Lost my N900
 

Makes me wonder what the best way to track your phone would be. If the device is stolen and the thief connects to the internet, the N900 could be prepared to notify the original owner about its location and maybe send pictures of its surroundings, ideally triggered by entering the wrong unlock code (which of course requires it to be set by the user).

I personally have my phone configured to connect to my openvpn server at home by default and use sshfs to copy files to and from it, as this way i can access the phones memory wherever it gets connected to the internet as the ip adress of the tunnel device stays the same - amazingly one can even change from wlan to 3g while copying files using sshfs, just some short freeze while the tunnel reconnects. It's not as fast as usb but it's very very convenient.
I now realized that if my phone would get lost, I still could connect to it and would have shell access (i'm pretty sure there would be a way to retrieve gps coordinates from the shell), however setting up a openvpn server is not what everybody does in his spare time, so I wonder if there is another, more easy way to keep the phone accessible from remote, or at least let it connect home in periods.

A dyndns client for the n900 might do the trick, if there is also an ssh server running on the device. If there is interest and it's not yet existing, I'd try compiling some dynamic dns client. Not sure how the different interfaces get handled, but i think it should at least be possible to make the device remote accessible when it connects to wlan.

Re: Lost my N900
 

If you have access to a an SSH account, you can keep a reverse port-forwarding open at all times (I use a simple looping shell-script and ssh-agent to keep the port-forward open all the times). Then you should be able to log into the phone remotely.

In cases like this, such a port-forward would let you log in to your phone to format it, wherever it is (as long as it has data connection of some sort). You might even be able to start up the GPS and figure out where it is :-) Not sure how to access the GPS from command line, though. Anyone else know?

Re: Lost my N900
 

But ain't there international blacklist for IMEI codes of the phones reported stolen? So reported phones can't access cellular networks. If this T-mobile doesn't do anything, I'd change operator asap! Thats poor service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imei#Bl...stolen_devices

Re: Lost my N900
 

i would be more concerned about the data on the phone than about loosing the device itself (which also is great pain). Think of getting your laptop stolen. Being able to delete this data before someone else figures out where e.g. the passwords are stored - most likely in clear text - is worth quite a lot, at least to me.

The reverse ssh method sounds easy, as long as one has access to machine with an running ssh server.
Btw. in the case of running ssh + dyndns on the device I'd recommend to disable password based logins and the use of a public key instead.