lost phone woes

this past weekend i went to las vegas with some friends, and i lost my iphone. The phone wasn't even 1 yr old, and i lost it by leaving it in a private cabana at the pool. quite the pathetic way to lose a phone i know. but i left without it and never saw it again.

losing a phone is stressful, regretful, embarrassing, disheartening, and plenty of other negative feelings rolled into one.  this is especially true when the phone you lost is apple's most recent model iphone. to replace what i lost it would cost me $750. waiting over a year for my contract to expire so that i can re-sign a contract and buy a new iphone at the subsidized price of $299 is also rather painstaking.

but i've already complained these woes to anyone who will listen to me vent. close friends have offered condolences and shared with me times that they lost or destroyed their phones. it happens. one fried tried to brighten my day by telling me that he was just pooped on. but seeing my friends dragged down didn't lift my spirits this time.

what i have realized these past few days is how redundant my phone has become, without me knowing it. i own a mac mini desktop, a macbook notebook, and an ipad. i can send imessages to the 99% of my friends who own ios devices from my computer and ipad -so no real loss of text messages. i can use facetime or skype to talk with my girlfriend at night. i can even keep up with all of my ios games via my ipad.

surprisingly my online life hasn't really seen a hiccup due to the loss of my phone. the biggest loss for me so far is the upcoming hit to my bank account.

granted, i did feel a bit of phone loss while in transit from vegas to san francisco. the first thing i do when i have an idle 30 seconds is pull out my iphone and stare at it. checking twitter, facebook, some of the games i play, etc. i wasn't able to do that between the cab, airport, and bart ride home from vegas, and that's when i missed the phone the most. however, i did what i used to do pre-iphone days. i people watched! it was pretty refreshing and fun for a while.

now i'm sure that when the weekend comes, or when i actually leave my house i will be missing the ability to look up directions. will i have to start printing mapquest? i'll also miss the ability to text message people while on the go. sure i can send messages now, but that only works while i'm at home on my wifi network. what happens when i'm planning to meet a friend at some pre-determined location, things change so suddenly these days, we always say "text me when you get there" or something of the like. i don't have that ability right now so i could end up eating dinner alone.

in all it isn't so bad. and makes me wonder if having an iphone is worth it for me since i have an ipad? the two devices sync virtually everything anyhow. how would my life be using a phone that only does talk/text?

i am going to use mom's old blackberry for now, as there are a billion rumors published daily about the next greatest apple phone being released, so it makes sense for me to wait and see what happens with that before i take any action.

(the tiger pic up top was the image i used for my iphone lock screen wallpaper)