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Apple has a history of offering seamless data syncing across multiple devices with its .Mac service, which was with MobileMe last summer. Although MobileMe keeps your information in perfect sync across desktops and Apple's mobile devices, the service isn’t perfect. The company has been mainly ironing out bugs and performance issues since the MobileMe launch last July. As a result, the company failed to deliver several promised features (MobileMe file sharing, for example) and has not expanded the service with new features. You could say that Microsoft is playing a catch up game with its upcoming My Phone service, but there will be more than meets the eye and it will give Apple's $99-a-year cloud suite a serious run for its money.
Based around technologies that Microsoft acquired when it purchased Portuguese developer MobiCorp last summer, My Phone (previously code-named SkyBox), takes MobileMe's contacts, email and calendar syncing to the next level with much broader content types that can be synced and backed up in the cloud. Expected to launch as a free beta in mid-February, My Phone will come in two flavors when version 1.5 is released this summer: Free and Premium, which will likely come with more features, enhanced online storage and no ads.
According to a teaser page at Windows Mobile Site, My Phone will work with Windows Mobile 6-compatible devices as an online hub that stores and syncs the content residing on your phone to a password-protected site in a Microsoft datacenter where it will be editable via a web interface. Unlike MobileMe, My Phone will let you sync other content beyond contacts and calendars. The default setting will back up phone contacts, text messages, calendar appointments, tasks and documents, in addition to music, photos and videos, but users will be able to cherry-pick content types they wish to include in their syncing schedule.
The service will make it easy to transfer information from an old phone to a new one, based on the image of the phone stored in the cloud. A basic, free service will come with 200 MB of secure, password-protected online storage to store content that resides on your phone – which may be a bit tight if you plan on syncing music, photos and videos. Microsoft said that users will receive an error message on their phones when they exceed the storage limit, adding that their accounts on the My Phone web site will only include information received prior to reaching the 200 MB limit. Any files in excess of this limit will not be saved.
In a nutshell, My Phone is Microsoft's answer to Apple's MobileMe that, among other things, keeps contacts, calendars and email synced between PC or Mac desktops, iPhones and an iPod touch. With My Phone, Microsoft is aiming to exploit weaknesses of Apple's Mobile. How do those two services compare?
Your mobile devices - in perfect sync
Once you perform an initial sync with My Phone, your phone will sync with the cloud once a day, between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. You could also perform a manual sync by selecting the Sync option found in the Microsoft My Phone application on a phone. Restoring a cloud backup to a new phone requires installing the My Phone application on a new phone and performing the sync.
"If you used My Phone on your old mobile phone, download and install Microsoft My Phone on your new mobile phone and sign in to the Microsoft My Phone application on your phone using the same Windows Live ID that you previously used," Microsoft wrote. "Then, by synchronizing manually or waiting for the next automatic synchronization, all information that you backed up to your Microsoft My Phone web account will be restored to the new phone."
It should be noted that syncing occurs over the cellular network, meaning it counts against your monthly wireless data, something you should keep in mind if you're going to include photos, music and videos in your syncing plan. As of press time, we were unable to confirm whether My Phone will work over a Wi-Fi connection as well.
My Phone: Full phone backups and restores over-the-air
My Phone advances MobileMe with broader content that basically includes everything you keep on your phone. iPhone users do not have such a feature and have to sync with iTunes if they want to create an iPhone backup or restore it to a new device later. Yes, iPhone users can also retrieve contacts, calendars and email that reside on Exchange and MobileMe servers over-the-air, simply by providing their service credentials on a new handset, but everything else has to go through iTunes. This includes mail settings, text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, certain network settings, and other preferences including settings and data from third-party applications purchased from the App Store.
Music, movies, TV shows, photos, podcasts, audio books and applications on the iPhone are not included in iTunes backup since this content resides in the iTunes library. This means that, in order to transfer content from one iPhone to another, you first have to restore a new iPhone from a previously created backup file, authorize the handset with iTunes and perform a full sync - all on a computer. My Phone achieves all this over-the-air, but both approaches have advantages and pitfalls.
A cloud backup of entire phone is better insurance policy compared to iPhone backups that live in iTunes on your desktop. If your hard drive fails and you did not back it up to other physical media, you may be in trouble. With a cloud backup, you assume that Microsoft's datacenters will not lose your data. However, syncing hundreds of megabytes of music, videos and images with iTunes on a desktop, over a USB cable beats cloud syncing over a much slower 3G network and does not eat into your monthly wireless data allowance. Perhaps Apple disabled music and video syncing over-the-air on iPhones with a reason...
Read on the next page: What My Phone lacks - and what it promises; Conclusion
Based around technologies that Microsoft acquired when it purchased Portuguese developer MobiCorp last summer, My Phone (previously code-named SkyBox), takes MobileMe's contacts, email and calendar syncing to the next level with much broader content types that can be synced and backed up in the cloud. Expected to launch as a free beta in mid-February, My Phone will come in two flavors when version 1.5 is released this summer: Free and Premium, which will likely come with more features, enhanced online storage and no ads.
According to a teaser page at Windows Mobile Site, My Phone will work with Windows Mobile 6-compatible devices as an online hub that stores and syncs the content residing on your phone to a password-protected site in a Microsoft datacenter where it will be editable via a web interface. Unlike MobileMe, My Phone will let you sync other content beyond contacts and calendars. The default setting will back up phone contacts, text messages, calendar appointments, tasks and documents, in addition to music, photos and videos, but users will be able to cherry-pick content types they wish to include in their syncing schedule.
The service will make it easy to transfer information from an old phone to a new one, based on the image of the phone stored in the cloud. A basic, free service will come with 200 MB of secure, password-protected online storage to store content that resides on your phone – which may be a bit tight if you plan on syncing music, photos and videos. Microsoft said that users will receive an error message on their phones when they exceed the storage limit, adding that their accounts on the My Phone web site will only include information received prior to reaching the 200 MB limit. Any files in excess of this limit will not be saved.
In a nutshell, My Phone is Microsoft's answer to Apple's MobileMe that, among other things, keeps contacts, calendars and email synced between PC or Mac desktops, iPhones and an iPod touch. With My Phone, Microsoft is aiming to exploit weaknesses of Apple's Mobile. How do those two services compare?
Your mobile devices - in perfect sync
Once you perform an initial sync with My Phone, your phone will sync with the cloud once a day, between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am. You could also perform a manual sync by selecting the Sync option found in the Microsoft My Phone application on a phone. Restoring a cloud backup to a new phone requires installing the My Phone application on a new phone and performing the sync.
"If you used My Phone on your old mobile phone, download and install Microsoft My Phone on your new mobile phone and sign in to the Microsoft My Phone application on your phone using the same Windows Live ID that you previously used," Microsoft wrote. "Then, by synchronizing manually or waiting for the next automatic synchronization, all information that you backed up to your Microsoft My Phone web account will be restored to the new phone."
It should be noted that syncing occurs over the cellular network, meaning it counts against your monthly wireless data, something you should keep in mind if you're going to include photos, music and videos in your syncing plan. As of press time, we were unable to confirm whether My Phone will work over a Wi-Fi connection as well.
My Phone: Full phone backups and restores over-the-air
My Phone advances MobileMe with broader content that basically includes everything you keep on your phone. iPhone users do not have such a feature and have to sync with iTunes if they want to create an iPhone backup or restore it to a new device later. Yes, iPhone users can also retrieve contacts, calendars and email that reside on Exchange and MobileMe servers over-the-air, simply by providing their service credentials on a new handset, but everything else has to go through iTunes. This includes mail settings, text messages, notes, call history, contact favorites, sound settings, widget settings, certain network settings, and other preferences including settings and data from third-party applications purchased from the App Store.
Music, movies, TV shows, photos, podcasts, audio books and applications on the iPhone are not included in iTunes backup since this content resides in the iTunes library. This means that, in order to transfer content from one iPhone to another, you first have to restore a new iPhone from a previously created backup file, authorize the handset with iTunes and perform a full sync - all on a computer. My Phone achieves all this over-the-air, but both approaches have advantages and pitfalls.
A cloud backup of entire phone is better insurance policy compared to iPhone backups that live in iTunes on your desktop. If your hard drive fails and you did not back it up to other physical media, you may be in trouble. With a cloud backup, you assume that Microsoft's datacenters will not lose your data. However, syncing hundreds of megabytes of music, videos and images with iTunes on a desktop, over a USB cable beats cloud syncing over a much slower 3G network and does not eat into your monthly wireless data allowance. Perhaps Apple disabled music and video syncing over-the-air on iPhones with a reason...
Read on the next page: What My Phone lacks - and what it promises; Conclusion