Lost phone and new phone

So I 'lost' my phone while in China. That's not exactly accurate. I say 'lost' - but really what happened was that I "helped someone steal my phone by leaving it unattended for a short period of time" - it just sounds less cynical to say the phone was 'lost' - but I knew where I accidentally left it, and 20mins later, it was gone without a trace.

I continue to think that we have an 'inappropriate emotional response to losing a phone' - I wrote about the experience in more detail on my Mo-Kenyan blog.

The minute I realized I had left it behind, I called and deactivated it. At $3/min in China, someone could have racked up charges pretty quickly. When I got back here I went to a T-Mobile store. I've been a customer (with a family plan) for like 12 years now - so even though I wasn't due for an upgrade discount, they took care of me. It's one of the reasons I've been a customer for so long. Their customer service is pretty good.

I bought the latest Android phone - the Samsung Galaxy IIs.

It's pretty hopped up - but the coolest thing (that I continue to be impressed with) is how an Android phone keeps most of it's configuration out in the Google 'cloud'. Meaning I just enter in my Google credentials and in about 30mins, my new phone has all the same apps, contacts, wallpaper, etc.. basically everything important to me, restored. All my eMail is also on servers somewhere, as are notes, pictures, etc. - so at least I didn't lose anything. Was a pain to change all my passwords just in case someone hacked the cached passwords on the stolen phone (Amazon, Starbucks, eMail, etc..) - but restoring the phone was actually pretty easy.

Oh - and I got handset insurance on this one :-)