As I was looking around the web yesterday at lots of Windows Mobile related sites, I came across several articles about Microsoft’s latest Cloud computing service, for Mobile Phones. It’s called MyPhone and enables you to backup and manages your phone’s contacts to a password protected site free of charge. Currently it’s only in Beta and I signed up to the waiting list, expecting to either not get a response or for it to take a long long time. I opened outlook this morning and got a pleasant surprise. I’d been accepted into the beta!
Signing up is a simple process, just go to http://myphone.microsoft.com and ask to be put on the waiting list. Once you’ve been accepted you sign in and are asked to install the software on your phone. This is done be going to a special link on your phone.
You then select which version you want (either Non-Touch or Touch). Download and open the .cab file. It’s then a simple process of accepting the license agreement, inputting your email address and password, selecting the data you want to sync/backup and then your sorted. If you have a Microsoft Exchange account, the data is instead synced to this server, rather than the MyPhone server. Things like Contacts, Calendar and Tasks are already synced with your Exchange server, and you can select to sync Text Messages, Photos, Video, Music and Documents. It will then go about syncing the data.
I’m doing this over my PC’s internet connection, via Active Sync as it is faster and cheaper than doing it over my phone’s data connection.
When your done, You’ll be able to see the main MyPhone homepage. This is where you can edit all the information synced, view it, and see what devices are in the sync partnership.
You get 200mb of storage, which is just the right amount for the average phone. It shows up in the same way as skydrive storage.
The ads which you can see aren’t that annoying. They seem to be exclusively Microsoft only ads for Live Search.
The only complaint I have so far about MyPhone is the interface on your actual phone. It’s very very basic. I know it’s still in Beta, so as things progress i’m sure the interface will get a lot more colourful and icon based.
I’m going to start something new now, so I’m seeing how it works and how people reading this like it. Marks out of 5.
Speed: 4
Interface on device: 2
Interface on PC: 4
Usefulness: 4
Reliability: 5
MyScore (:D) for this beta so far: 7/10
