Why don't you just call your phone?

I can't call my cell phone because I have completely gotten rid of my landline phone and exclusively use my cell phone. One of the few downsides is that if I misplace my cell phone, finding someone else to call it can be a challenge.

While you're at it, how about it also locks your phone and uses a ringtone which sounds loud chimes and repeats, "I am a lost phone." The website you use to activate it would present a code to you which you would use when you found the phone to unlock it.

Here's where it gets cool. Let's say you left it in a classroom or el-train or something. Also on the website you would have configured a phone number to contact you. This could be a payphone or your landline, your girlfriend's cell, whatever. The carrier transmits this to the phone. When the phone gets the signal, it goes into "Lost Phone Lock Mode." This causes the following response:- Disable outbound calling.- Start the "I am a lost phone" chime. Repeat periodically until found.- When a button is pressed or the flip opened, display on the screen: "Lost phone. Press SEND to contact owner."- When user hits SEND, the phone automatically dials the number you entered on the site, and you can negotiate with the user terms for safe return.- Optionally you could add to the message. "Lost Phone. Reward $50. Press SEND."- Phone would remain in this "Lost Phone Lock Mode" state until you entered your code on the keypad.

If the carrier wanted to make it a superpremium service, instead of trying to get a hold of you on someone else's phone, they could have the lost phone connect the finder to a call center (no holding of course) where the carrier negotiates return for you, and even pays a reward (since you'd pay them ~ $5-7 per month for the service, or a certain amount per incident they could afford to throw $25 or maybe a gift certificate at the finder to guarantee a safe and timely return. With this method you'd have one step to recover a lost phone, and they'd do the rest of the work for you!

Obviously, for the much more common times when your phone was lost in your house, you won't go through most of these steps, you'll find your phone in your bedroom just by the chiming, and enter the code, and you shouldn't incur any costs for this (other than maybe a fee for the message sent to the phone, along the lines of an SMS). Obviously only in the "lost in a public place" scenario would phone calls/call centers/whatever take place.

More thoughts:- Use GPS to notify you where your lost phone is, in case the "finder" isn't cooperative and your phone is valuable.- what else?

there is a software for pda / smart phone which will send a SMS to a predefined number when SIM card in the phone is changed. i.e. i will set up details in my device to send message to my close associate. when SIM is taken out and new SIM is inserted in the device it will send message to my associate with new number of the SIM.

Phones might answer to claps .. you clap .. phone beepsband.

You could sign on to AIM and enter your cell number on your buddy list (there are directions for it. you must enter +1 before the 10 digit #). Send a text to your phone to see if you hear it...send several until you find it. Or you could IM a friend and ask them to call it.

If you need to call your phone and you dont have another phone to call from, you can always go to google maps and type in a random business name. Click on one that pops up and it should have a button that says call (if it doesnt, find a different selection), click on that button, and type in your number and it will call your phone. Your number is completely safe and will not br given out to anyone

Or you can just that wheresmycellphone.com website to find it!

If you don't have another phone to call it with why don't you just use Phonebuzzer.com, it will call your phone for you so you can find it.