[Verizon Galaxy Note 4 General] armeN0317:
Hey guys! Let me start off by saying the XDA community has been awesome since day 1 in 2011. Many modded phones all thanks to these forums. If anybody can figure out a root for our device it's this community! I know this is a bit of a long post but I would really appreciate as many eyes on this as possible. If anything you might learn from my mistakes.

So I pre ordered my White Verizon Note 4 on 9-25. It arrived on 10-23 like most everybody who pre ordered. Those who did not follow the debacle some people did not get their phones until the 31st (especially white ones) with stores lucky to even have 1 in stock. Naturally when my phone arrived I was very excited to be part of the small percentage of early lucky ones. I setup my phone, transferred my 64gb Samsung PRO SD Card full of pictures and started test driving my new devices. On 10-24 I boarded a cruise off the coast of California (San Pedro) to Ensenada, Mexico. I took my new phone with me in hopes of taking some wonderful pictures to show off to the community and highlight some of the phones great features. The first night on board after several pictures the day before and day of (not counting any previous on my SD card) I realized after dinner my phone was missing. Looked all over and of coarse no luck. Lost and found never saw it to this day. Android Device Manager is useless without a signal or internet connection so the phone was essentially lost. I keep my phone unlocked since I don't have any privacy issues and it's always with me so whoever found it had access to all my pictures and information.

Now onto the part of why you should care.... When I lost my phone I'm willing to bet there were less than a hundred white note 4's in the Los Angeles area. So naturally I suspected my phone will pop up on eBay sooner or later. At this point the loss of the phone is a wash (insurance provided a replacement... granted they don't have any white ones in stock so I had to settle for a black but better than nothing). It's my precious pictures I was more concerned about since they were of family, trips, friends, life memories. I was hoping whoever found the phone would dial my wife's number which is saved on the first screen as a direct dial and at least offer to return the pictures if anything else. So no Android Device Manager track and nothing suspicious on eBay. You could say all is lost give up and move on with your replacement device.... Until I noticed 2 posts .. 1 created the day after my cruise return by someone who just signed up to xda forums. That post was titled "Verizon Note 4 on Straight Talk" and the other "Verizon Note 4 on T Mobile". In both of these posts in these forums the OP describes wanting to use their White Verizon Note 4 devices on a different carrier. One of them even claiming they bought the phone on Amazon (who really buys a Verizon Note 4 on amazon only to activate it on T Mobile or Straight Talk?). I think the timing of all this and the lack of White Verizon Note 4's out there leads to me to believe one of these posters found and stole my phone. Call me crazy but I'm riding my gut on this one. Could I be wrong? Of coarse but I think the odds are not that far off. I lost my phone when nobody had a White Verizon Note 4. I asked both of the OP's if their phone had a bad ESN or clean ESN playing coy and neither one of them responded. So I have no real proof just a little bit of leg work on my part and logic problem solving. Why you should care? well simple... as a community we are supposed to band together and help each other out. That's why we are here. We offer support to each other about the device. I would hope that in the unfortunate event somebody from the forums looses their phone and it's picked up by another forum member the mutual respect is there to return the device. I want to bring attention to this unfortunate event to hopefully shed light for someone in the future. If anything learn from my mistake and lock your phone down. For reference here are the 2 posts:

http://xdaforums.com/note-4-verizon/general/verizon-note-4-t-mobile-network-t2916727

http://xdaforums.com/note-4-verizon/help/verizon-note-4-straighttalk-t2921736 -------- (this is the guy with the Oct join date)

Thank you guys for listening to me vent. I am also offering a $1,000 reward for the return of my pictures no questions asked. Some of those pictures have huge sentimental value. If anybody has any information that would help by all means don't hesitate. If anybody knows anything about the phones or OP's in the above posts especially the straight talk one let me know. I realize I could be wrong and this could all just be wishful thinking but given the value of the pictures I lost it's worth it to be wrong and try.

As an idea I thought about calling straight talk, t mobile, and some other carriers and providing my imei or esn to see if my phone has been activated on their network. I don't know if this is information they would actually share but it was a thought. Any insight?

On a much happier note (pun intended lol) we did have a wonderful trip and managed to take more pictures with my wife's note 3 and a canon camera we bought along just in case. My replacement device was from assurion and it was brand new. The phone has been awesome so far. So if you happen to have my phone and you saw my pictures and still didn't bother to return it karma's gonna get you one day.

Funny side story: While on the cruise I was joking around with my wife and friends telling them I was reading peoples faces on the cruise. If anybody saw my pictures and saw me walk by them their facial reaction would be a dead give away. No luck lol but it was a fun drinking game.