First of all, you should call your carrier to suspend service. It may be tempting to leave your phone on just in case the person that found it will call you. The chances of that happening are so slim as to be not even worth considering, especially when you take into account the fact that someone could use your phone to call all their relatives in Bora Bora and download a couple thousand dollars worth of ringtones in just a few minutes. In addition, most people that find a phone wouldn't have any idea where to call, even if you put owner in the contact list, most people would not think to look there. Give the phone one call, and if no one picks up, suspend it. If the person that has your phone can't use it for more than a paperweight, he might be more likely to return it.

Some of the newer phones offer services that let you lock your phone and track it remotely. Some of these programs have to be downloaded or set up before the phone is lost, so be sure and do that when you first get the phone. If you have one of these phones, by all means, use that program to lock it and find it. Unfortunately, the majority of phones aren't there yet, so you have to use some ingenuity if you hope to find it. The first step to take is to look at the last calls made on the phone.

Most carriers offer an online service where you can see the calls you made, the times, and sometimes even the place. That may jog your memory as to the last place you had the phone, or if someone found it and used it, may give you a number to call to find out who has it.

Another good idea is to file a police report. It is amazing how many phones turn up in stolen property raids by the police. It is good to be proactive and write the serial number of you phone down, which can usually be found under the battery, before it is ever lost. Even if the phone wasn't stolen, sometimes people will turn in a lost phone to the police if it is found and they can get it back to you.

And of course in this new millennium, be sure to take advantage of all the social networking out there. Post a reward on Craigslist or one of the other sites that is a local connection for your area. Describe where and when you lost the phone, and maybe someone saw something, even if they don't have your phone, and can give you a lead to go on. The more people that see your appeal, the more likely you can get your phone back in one piece.

If the phone can't be located, you still may have the ability to get your important contacts and information back. Most carriers have a backup service for contacts on their website. Again, you have to do this before the phone is lost, but it is a pretty quick process. When you get your new phone then, the contacts can be synchronized with the new phone. Many phones also have email, calendar, and task list backups through either the Windows, Google, or Iphone operating systems where all that information is stored online. Finding your original phone is the ideal, but even if that never comes to fruition, it is not like the old days when you had to start from scratch. Now, most of the time, you can be back to where you started with just a quick trip the the cell phone store for a new phone and activation.