Microsoft’s MyPhone is Great But…

Microsoft’s MyPhone service allows you to backup your Windows Mobile device to the cloud in case of loss or accidental deletion. It’s a very simple application that will backup your data once a day at a given time. It only uploads the items that have been added or changed. When you get a new phone, you can just install the MyPhone client and it will sync all your contacts, photos, music, and appointments. If you don’t have data, you can still use MyPhone. Just configure the client to do a manual sync and make sure you ActiveSync your phone first and then you can run the backup. It’s worth having a backup.Since I have an unlimited data plan, I leave my phone to backup every night at 11:30pm.

I came across a bug with MyPhone while I was on vacation and out of cellular coverage. As I mentioned, the MyPhone client is set to backup my phone every night. However, since I was out of cellular coverage I disabled the radio on the phone. Why waste the battery having it try to find a cell tower when I know it won’t. However, MyPhone would still run and try to run the backup despite not having a cellular connection to work on. It would then display an error message about failing to backup. Now, I can understand that there is a need to let the user know that the backup failed. However, if the cellular radio isn’t even on, then I don’t see the point. The radio would have been turned off for a reason – MyPhone needs to check the status of the radio and respect that. I use the phone as a clock, and in the morning I grab it to see the time. Because of this, I had to clear the error before returning to the home screen and seeing the time.

MyPhone still ranks tops in my books, but Microsoft needs to address this little bug. Oh, and while you’re at it, they should also think about allowing you to name each phone that connects. As it is now, I have 5 “Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard” and 1 “Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional”. I can figure out which device the Professional one is. But I’m not sure which of the Standard ones I should be deleting. It would also be nice if I could connect multiple phones to the same MyPhone account and decide if I want to keep their information separate from each other or merged together so that they all have the exact same content. I’ve got a lot of other nice-to-have’s for MyPhone, but for now, let’s just start with fixing the problem with trying to sync even when the radio is off.

Touring MyPhone – Microsoft’s Online Backup for Smartphones

In February of this year, Microsoft announced the beta for a new product called MyPhone. With MyPhone, Microsoft is looking to provide simple and easy backup of your device to the cloud, where you can safely manage and restore the data to a new device or to your existing device in the off chance that some horrible event has caused you to lose your phone or the data it contains. The private beta has recently been lifted and the service is now available for everyone to test and enjoy.

The MyPhone service will not backup your entire device. It will only consider certain items when backing up. MyPhone provides 200MB of space to backup your Contacts, Calendar, Tasks, Text Messages, Photos, Video’s, Music, and Documents. On a side note, if you are already sync’ing your email, contacts, and calendar with Exchange, MyPhone will not back those up. When it comes to documents, MyPhone won’t just backup anything in your My Documents folder. It looks for specific file types that it will backup.

To get started with MyPhone, head over to MyPhone.Microsoft.com and create an account. Then grab your smartphone and browse to MyPhone.Microsoft.com/Install to download and install the device client. When you first run this client, you will be prompted to accept Microsoft’s legal terms and then sign-in using your Live ID. This will connect your phone with the account you just setup at the MyPhone website. The last thing that you need to do is select if you want to synchronize automatically or manually. The default when you select Automatically is to sync once a day in the middle of the night. This can be changed by selecting Menu / Schedule from the MyPhone app on the device. Here you can pick between Daily and Weekly and change the actual time of day that the backup runs. [ ..Read More.. ]

Clinton Fitch Reviews Spb Backup

“…the newest version of Spb Software House’s has to be considered one of the best already. Version 2.0 of Backup builds on an already solid foundation that was set in version 1.5 but layers on key functionality that allows you to backup and restore literally any aspect of your device. Some of the new features include synchronization of your backup files to your PC, the ability to intelligently determine if you are restoring data to a new device or to a device in which you have upgraded the ROM, a new user interface and ability to unpack a backup file on your PC makes this application solid choice for your backup needs.”

Clinton has recently posted a review of the new Spb Backup 2.0. Backups are something everyone should be doing on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter if it’s your mobile device or your desktop computer. If it has anything valuable on it, you need to back it up. The latest version from Spb allows you to sync the backup files with your desktop computer. It sounds like a great idea to help keep a running history from your device. Check out his full review here.

Backing Up Your PIM Data on the Device

There are a number of different applications out there that will backup your Windows Mobile device. Some do it over ActiveSync from your desktop while others actually run on the device and save the backup to a storage card. Most of these apps are pretty good and provide a great way to create a 100% image of your device. However, for me, I just want to backup my contacts and appointments – my PIM data. If I’m out roaming the world and my device has some major crash, having a copy of my contacts and appointments that I can restore to the device after a hard reset is imperative. I already keep a folder on my MicroSD card with all the CAB files for the applications I use. So I can reinstall them without much concern. The other advantage of backing up just the contacts and appointments is that they can easily be restored to a different device in the case where my device meets an early demise.

To do a complete backup of your all your PIM data on a device, I’ve been using a free application from “Dot Fred”. You can download a copy from his website – www.dotfred.net. It’s not that pretty an application, but when it comes to functionality, it’s top notch. If you’re looking at running this on a Smartphone, be prepared for a little more work as the interface is clearly designed for tapping on. It can still be used, but there’s a lot of scrolling and tabbing around at times.

PIM Backup doesn’t just backup your contacts and appointments, it also backs up the speed dial settings you’ve created along, call logs, messages, and there is even a custom option that allows you to select individual files or folders that you want to include in the backup. Once you’ve selected everything, you can select the destination for the backup along with creating a schedule for when you want it to run.

The only drawback that I have found in my use of this app, besides the poor interface for non-touch screen devices, is that it on restore it doesn’t create the mailboxes for the messages to go in. If you create the account first and then run restore, it will put them back into that inbox, but for whatever reason, it doesn’t create that account. I’m hoping that this is something that can be added in the future. For me, it’s the only thing missing on an otherwise great backup application. Regardless of that, you can’t go wrong for the price! Dot Fred has done a great job on this utility.