My friend has 'lost' mobile phone. If it does not turn up in a few day's time will have to buy a new one. I take it that if he did not keep a copy of his personal contacts, there is no way of retrieving this data to xfer to the new phone when bought?

Depends on what mobile he had.. With Android phones, you have the option to save contacts to your "Google" account.

When i got a new phone (also android), when i entered my google account details, it synced with google and downloaded all my google contacts..

Shenn