What are you supposed to do if you lose your cell phone?

First of all, try calling it and see if anyone picks up. You’d be surprised hwo often that happens. Someone may even call one of your contacts and trace you that way; that happened when my son left his phone in a cab in Philly. Next, retrace your steps and ask people if a phone has been turned in. Give it a few days and if it doesn’t come home, hie yourself off tto the Apple store.

however as its an IPhone…it may disappear forever! only thing you can do is keep calling it!

If you don’t get an answer, call your provider and report it lost. The sooner you do the less hassle you have with paying any fraudulent charges.

Do you by chance have a MobileMe account? Because if you do you can find the general area of your phone and lock it so nobody can use it.

Do you have insurance on your phone?

Congratulations on your (until now) good record. My son lost (or drowned or ran over) his cellphone about once a year for some time. If you have the phone insured, you can get a replacement phone pretty quickly and get your service transferred over to it, disconnecting the existing phone. But first, as others suggest, I would try calling it., assuming it’s unlocked.

That, by the way, is the reason I stopped locking mine. I hope that if I lost it, someone would notice that there’s a speed-dial button labeled “home” that goes to our land line (which I’m not giving up) and would use it, or at least would answer if I called.

@shego that’s a great idea! Additionally you can show the phone on a map, so you can go knock on the door of the thief or the pub you forgot it at. You can also make it play a sound and display a message on the screen. I have it, and i know it’s going to save me one day.

Call everywhere you think it could be. There really are some honest people out there who would turn in even a nice phone to lost & found. And as other people have said, call yourself over and over. I lose phones on a regular basis (which is why I have a $20 Go Phone) and more often than not, that’s how I get it back.
Call AT&T after you’re sure it’s lost for real, and not under your car seat or something.
They can remotely disable your SIM so that a) Other people don’t get your contacts and b) No charges can be made.

@wilhel1812 I know it has saved me too.
That is why I was wondering

I once lost about five phones in the span of about a week. Yeah.

#1 – You need to get the lost phone off your line. You don’t want whoever found it to be able to use your phone plan when calling their uncle in Siberia.

#2 – You need to get a replacement.

Oh wait, no I read @janbb‘s suggestion. Yeah, try calling it first. Then if that doesn’t work, have it disabled.

Alright, my phone has been recovered. Sorry for jumping the gun there, it’s just that really, I’ve had a cell phone for almost six years and never lost it other than losing it my own room. It was at the library, but not in the library. Went back to the library, they didn’t have it at the Lost and Found, so I started freaking out more, but then I remembered my boyfriend and I had been sitting in the grass by the side of the library. Sure enough, there it was lying face up with a billion missed calls and texts. I was wearing a pair of nylon basketball-style shorts. Somtimes when I’m in the car with those, my phone will fall out. Guess the same thing happened here. I still think it’s weird that I didn’t notice this at all, but eh, that’s how it goes. :)

Thanks for your responses, though. I forgot about the whole MobileMe thing. :)

@DominicX I’m glad you found your phone! :)

Go Walmart and buy a cheap prepaid phone that is with your service provider. Also buy a sim card. Call the provider and they can activate the sim while you are on the phone with them. Now you have service. If you find you iphone just put the newer sim into your iphone. If you are not going to do this right away, go online and temporarily deactivate your service. My experience is with AT&T but assume other carriers operate similarly.