Call my phone…

Somewhere between one and 5 percent of all cell phone calls made today are done to help find a missing phone.

That information comes from a new study by the federal Bureau of Universal Learning and Scientific Hypothesis Training (BULSHT). The study will be released as soon as the researchers can find their phones, which have the computer passwords.

“We got to wondering about this one day down at the lab,” said Dr. Grant S. Eeker, the first author of the study. “We all kept losing our phones and had to get someone to call it. We’d listen for the rings and run like Montezuma’s Revenge to get there before the call went to voice mail or cut off. We started an informal study that showed about 3.5 percent of the phone calls we got were from someone else in the lab calling our phones so we could find ’em.”

Dr. Eeker said the 3.5 is an average. Some scientists had less and some had more. 

Only calling works, he said.

“Text messages, it rings once or vibrates. So unless you are right on top of it or are very sensitive and I’m talking Twilight Vampire kind of sensitive, a text is not going to help you find a phone,” he said. “The real problem is when the call goes to voice mail after two or three rings. Then someone has to keep calling and keep calling and hope you find it before voice mail fills up and phone stops taking calls altogether.”

The research lab looked around for some foreclosed vacation properties and applied for a federal grant to study the ratio of cell phone calls to misplaced phones.

The first step was to contact cell phone companies for call records. The scientists were after two things:

• Duration of call. Typically a “missing phone” call is either never answered or lasts only a couple of seconds, Dr. Eeker said. 

“You’re looking for a phone. You’re not looking to have a conversation with the caller. In fact you just spoke to the caller and asked them to call your phone. What are you going to talk about? You say, ‘Got it’ and hang up. Then you send several hundred texts describing how you lost the phone, where it was, how you found it and a few dozen LOL posts between actual messages,” Dr. Eeker said. “You probably also take a picture of the place where you found the phone and send that to the person who helped you find it. Like they really forgot what the bathroom looks like.”

• Number of calls from the same caller in the space of a few minutes.

“Voice mail. You gotta find that phone in under a minute or the call cuts off. If you don’t, they have to call you again,” Dr. Eeker said. “We discovered the average ‘find my phone!’ takes 2.7 attempts. 

The researchers then contacted people at random to discuss lost phones. Cell owners were matched to the number of potential “lost my phone” calls which were indicated in their usage reports. Dr. Eeker said a cross section was taken. Except for one person.

Most people were surprised, at first, to find out how many calls were actually made to help find a missing cell phone, the report states. But given a few minutes to think about it, most people agree the figures presented were accurate.

The one person who is identified in the study by the initials Larry “Hawgin'” Fishbreath showed 110 percent of his incoming calls were made to help him find his phone. Dr. Eeker noted Mr. Fishbreath apparently had more phone calls than possible, but he excused this away noting Mr. Fishbreath works part time as an independent contractor.

With Mr. Fishbreath’s data excluded, the study showed that people lose their phone more often than they are willing to admit.

“Uh, I hate to ask this, but could you call my cell phone? I seem to have misplaced it,” Dr. Eeker said as he concluded the interview.