Cellphone theft prevention

With cellphones becoming as close a commodity to actual cash in several countries, there are obviously several ways that the government can help stop the rampant spread of mobile phone snatching. Where I’m from, we have a few public service campaigns (albeit not very widespread) on how to make cellphone theft an unprofitable sideline by reporting a lost phone to the NTC and having your IMEI (the main key of your phone) blocked. This is different from blocking off your SIM card as the IMEI will render the entire phone useless.

The guys at Mobile Review suggest waiting a while before doing such lockdown measures:

If your mobile gets stolen or lost, if a good person has it, he will call you or redial or use number from your phonebook to contact you, this happened to a friend of mine. The phone was recovered. In this case I suggest not to use the PIN Code or block your SIM immediately that will prohibit this good person from getting your info and contacting you. If it was stolen and a thief has it he or she will might call home or someone, you can contact your service provider for the call history after the mobile was stolen and probably catch the theif. You can also dial your number and the thief might answer it (a fool that is) and it may help you determine who the hell it is. PIN Code and blocked SIM are useless here as well. The only useful code that will make it hard for a devil mind to use the phone
is Prevent New SIM Phone Code, but it is still not fool proof.

Lia of The Gadgenista reportedly lost her phone and had to resort to doing this. She was able to replace her phone with exactly the same model, because that is how much the Gadgenista loves her gadgets.