So after losing my cell phone in Vegas, I called Verizon and since the phone was insured, a new one was sent out to me. Hurrah!
While waiting for it to arrive I did some research and found a Droid app called "MobileDefense" which allows you to contact your phone and using the GPS feature, track it down and hopefully recover it. It's in beta at the moment, and free, so I had Garry put it on his phone and I put it on my new one when it showed up.
The next Friday we picked Garry up at work and drove home. He got out to check the mail at the mailbox then got back in the car and we went on up to the house. Once inside he started to stomp around in panic mode. "I've lost my phone," he said, apparently certain that I was going to start screaming at him. He was sure he'd lost it at the loading dock at work where he was waiting on us, so he grabbed his keys and headed out to his car.
"Wait!" I hollered. "Let's use MobileDefense and see if we can locate it first."
"I want to get there before someone picks it up," he insisted and off he went. Russ managed to pass his own phone to Garry so we could contact him if need be.
Meanwhile, I fired up my iPad and logged on to Garry's MobileDefense account and started the tracking process. When the map appeared with the blue dot for the phone's location it was at the end of our driveway. I yelled at Russ, "Stop Garry and go look at the base of the mailbox! It might have fallen off the waist of his sweatpants when he checked the mail."
Russ ran out, but Garry was gone. He looked around the mailbox. Nothing.
I, however, had my eye on the blue dot and it was moving down the street and headed toward the beltway. I picked up my phone and called Russ's cell. Garry answered it.
"Hello?"
"Are you on 140?"
"Yea."
"Are you about to get on the beltway?"
"Yea."
"Dude, MobileDefense says you've got the phone."
"That can't be. It's not on me."
"Maybe this thing is wrong, but it shows the phone as being exactly where you are."
"Oh." Pause...suppressed chuckle. "Oh."
"What?" I asked.
"I found it. It's here. In my bookbag."
Knowing it would likely detach from his sweatpants, he put the phone in his bookbag....then forgot.
He turned around and came home. Phone located. Crisis averted.
So..in it's first shakedown test, MobileDefense worked! It's free now, but when they want to charge for it, we're buying!
