I saved the entire contents of my Nokia N900 as a single NBU file on my pc a few days ago, luckily, as my phone has now gone missing. So I am wondering if its REALLY possible to track an n900 from its IMEI number, even if its got a now blocked sim card? Many on here say "no", yet 100s of websites say absolutely, eg followus.co.uk? Can anyone verify? I have also heard that if the phone uses CDMA, then its definately not trackable, and Ive no idea if that would refer to a standard n900 or not?

PS
I am also wondering how I can extract all content of the NBU file onto my pc , so I know everything I had on my phone before it went missing (not just images and mp3s, also text files and all other documents)?

phones can be tracked by cell phone triangulation, and as far as i know, a reported phone can be broadcasted as stolen, and the all carriers in the country, and maybe even outside, block the possibility of the phone with that imei to ever work again.

as far whether you can do that, i know the authorities can do that with a warrant, but such websites may have disclaimers, you're best off by asking the police to help

To answer part of your question, CDMA are American carriers like Sprint and Verizon. They use their own modem chips and frequencies in their CDMA-based phones, both of which are different from the global GSM networks that the N900 uses. I can't imagine a CDMA phone being less trackable since it doesn't use a SIM card. And to have a CDMA phone unlocked the owner would have to release the IMEI for it to have a clean record and be usable. As for the N900, I think you'd have to have tracking software installed and pay a service fee.

I guess I really should have reported it straight away, but my phone went missing in a public area, so I gave them 2 weeks to search to see if they could find it first. With websites such as that site in my first post, they seem to be asking for £16/around $25 a time for the most basic of searches, yet they dont seem to list exactly how they manage to find the missing item, or any reviews from anyone that may have used their service.

Even if it did work, their map demo suggests that the minimum £16 would probably show which town your phone was in, and youd probably have to keep paying up with a few more additional "£16"' to zoom in on the map, to work out what road/house it was lying around in! lol. I would suppose the phone would have to be switched on anyway, and if it was genuinely missing and not stolen, no doubt their service would be considered useless, since the phone will have long ran out of battery power. I did report my missing phone to my provider, so they stopped my sim card from working

It's too late for you now, but the (free) webservice I setup at http://www.whereismydevice.com would have helped with this. See more at http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=51027

Cheers,

Ben