At the train station we find peoples phones regularly. It is astonishing how dumb the process is for returning such a sophisticated piece of electronics. Any p

At the train station we find peoples phones regularly. It is astonishing how dumb the process is for returning such a sophisticated piece of electronics. Any person who finds it can be expected to make some small effort to return it. Dropping it off at lost & found items is already pushing it. IMHO in locked state it should have a button to call the carrier and the carrier should make an effort to register a phone number, email or address. Iphones do have a lost mode but I've never seen it in action. A found phone is essentially a brick without any visible id code. So the real world process is now like that of all other dumb luggage. It goes to lost & found, you register the loss and wait for it to be found, dropped off, registered, if the item matches your description you get 5 days to pick it up where it was found, then it is send to a central location which could take a good while! Then you pay 15 euro to have it send back to you. Bank and id cards are destroyed. But how do you identify a brick? Expect to be without a phone for at least a week. You could be standing there in front of the closed doors but there is no way to return your belongings. There remains much to do in this service area. If there is a standard finders reward it might even be worth it for the thief to return it. I'd much rather pay say 30 bucks to get it back. The thief just switches it off and has it stripped for parts. If the standard reward is good enough people will make a serious effort getting it back to you. Truly wild would be if it could use the back camera to continuously scan a crowd to identify its owner. Draw boxes around the faces with a different color and a bleep for potential candidates so that one can walk towards them. Display a name or id number to broadcast over the train station, mall or airport announcement system.