When I forgot my phone in the cab

Once upon a time, mobile phone numbers could be saved only either on the phone or on the SIM. 

If the phone was lost or damaged all the numbers would be lost. Then, there would be frantic attempts to contact everyone who matters to us, in order to get their numbers.

If we were just replacing an existing phone, then the entire lot of numbers had to be transferred on to the new phone.

Then came the new feature of saving these numbers in the cloud -- either on iCloud/iTunes or on Google.

This was a huge relief. No phone number is ever lost, unless one lost access to the cloud account.

I always had an Android phone. So, I am not familiar with how easy or efficient it's to have the contact details backed up on iCloud / iTunes.

In Android it's pretty simple. Whenever a new contact has to be added, the default option is to save it to the Google account. If other accounts have been added, they too show up, besides an option to save it to the phone in the good old way.

The big advantage is that when I get a new phone, I just don't have to worry about the contacts. They are all there when I log into my Google account.

But recently it helped me on another occasion. 

I left my phone in the office cab that dropped me home after work.

I realised it when I entered home. 

There was a colleague of mine in the cab. I could call him or even the driver or the cab manager from my wife's phone. But I didn't know any of their numbers.

Google came to my rescue. 

All that I had to do was open my laptop, and go to my Gmail contacts. I took my colleague's number from there, and called him from my wife's phone.

After dropping my colleague home (luckily not too far from where I stay), the driver took the trouble to come back to my place, and handed over my phone.

(Image by Firmbee from Pixabay)