We've featured numerous ways to call your lost phone so you can find it, but reader Java-Princess lets us know that a white noise ringtone on the other end will make it even easier to find.
I was recently in England and the fire alarm in the hotel we stayed in was quite different in sound to a normal fire alarm. (BTW there wasn't a fire—the hotel performed daily tests at the same time every day.) The noise it made was pulses of white noise a bit like the hiss between radio stations only more fierce sounding and staccato.
I got to chatting with the desk clerk about it and he said the white noise speakers are over the fire doors. Apparently the human ear finds it much easier to gauge the direction of a source of white noise than it does a bell or other limited frequency sound. So this means it is easier to locate the fire door in a smoke filled room if this white noise generator is squawking at you rather than ringing a bell.
Okay, several days later and this information is still rolling around my head (there's not much to impede it) when my cellphone rang. I couldn't quite locate it—you know how that is sometimes, you put it down somewhere and then forget where, it sounds like it's everywhere. Guess what, I thought about that fire alarm back in England. So, I got one of the interns at work to make me a ring tone which was just pulses of white noise. We put it on my phone then got someone to hide it. We called the number and were able to pinpoint the phone's location exactly.
So, the tip is: make a white noise ring tone for calls you don't want to miss (boss, mom or dad). Something like this works pretty well. Not only is the phone more easily locatable but the sound carries farther and is instantly recognizable as your phone. It's a little antisocial I guess but so am I.
This also works if you just want to make a ringtone for, say, your Google Voice number, so when you've lost your phone you can find it right away.
Photo by Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged.