Morning Discussion

My son lost his phone in the woods Saturday.

He and a handful of friends got together to play some Airsoft on ten acres of wooded property owned by one of their families. Toby didn't want to give away his position in the off chance someone called him, so he put the phone on silent. He also dislikes the vibrate function because "it scares him". I told him the decision to carry a phone that made no noise whatsoever in his sweatshirt pocket while running through the woods was not a wise one, and in hindsight he agreed. We wandered around the property attempting to retrace his steps for about 30 minutes, but had no luck.

The potential saving grace was the fact that the phone lights up when there's an incoming call. Since I had a general idea of the layout of the property from earlier in the day, my brilliant idea was to go back out that night and try calling his number every 20 yards, looking for the tell-tale blue light. After dropping Toby off at my grandmother's for the weekend, I took my 9 year-old out there with a couple of flashlights and we started looking. It was pitch black once you got beyond the lights from a nearby house, and poor little Allison was starting to get a little worried, and turning off the flashlights to call the phone only made it worse.

First we went towards the nearby pond and then back up a different path to get to the main clearing, calling every minute or so and staring into the darkness. Past the clearing was the thickest part of the woods, where the boys had spent the majority of their time earlier that day. At the edge of the clearing I tried to lighten the mood a bit, but by this point is was beyond dark and Allison wasn't the only one spooked anymore. Again, we turned off the flashlights and called the phone, and that's when we heard footsteps somewhere up ahead in the woods. When we turned our lights back on and and two red eyes reflected back at me. It was hard to tell how far away they were, but if I had to guess I'd say thirty yards, but that would be different depending on the size of the animal. The eyes went away for a moment, then came back, still staring at us, glowing red. Thankfully, Allison didn't see them. I told Allison that was probably enough for the night and we started back to the car. While walking I tried to put her mind at ease, telling her it was getting kind of chilly, that the phone was old and busted anyway, and that I didn't want her to get caught on any thorns in the woods, but every few steps I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure there was nothing behind us.

After we got into the car, I said "Do you know why we came back to the car? It was because I saw two eyes shining back at us in the woods." She said "I'm so glad you didn't tell me that when we were out there! I would have run back to the car!" I told her it was probably a deer or a dog, but I don't have much experience with wild animals, so I have no idea what it could have been and I wasn't about to find out.

TLDR; does anyone have any experience with the Pantech Slate? That's the phone my son is looking at to replace the phone he lost. Is it any good?
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/?device=pantech+slate+(c530)&q_sku=sku3050240