Microsoft My Phone, first impressions

Microsoft unveiled its new service called My Phone, a service to sync text messages, photos, video, contacts and more to the Web, at the Mobile World Congress. The My Phone service helps users to automatically upload photos and video from their Windows phone directly to the My Phone service. The My Phone service is currently available in a limited invitation-only beta

Once you get access to the My Phone service, you can download and install the My Phone installer cab to your Windows phone. Below is the installation walkthrough


My Phone Home Page

Once you install and setup your Windows phone with My Phone service, you can now access your My Phone home page in the web

You can now browse through your Windows phone items here

Connected Phones

Photos

Music

Calendar

Documents

Adding New Items to Web

As you can see in the above screenshots, you can also upload new items and sync them at your next restore. For example, I uploaded a new document to my Documents folder in my web

Once the upload is over, the new document is uploaded in my web

To restore to your phone, you just need to select that document and choose to restore to your phone

And it is ready to be restored in your next sync

Deleted Items

The My Phone web also has a Deleted Items folder. The items that you delete in the web goes to this Deleted Items folder which can be later restored or deleted permanently

And your home page too notifies about the deleted items

Final Verdict

My Phone service is slick, great if you want to backup and restore your Windows Phone completely. Though you cant select your custom folders in the Windows Phone, you could very well include storage card (photos,videos,music,documents) if any to sync. You cannot sync contacts, calendar and tasks to My Phone service if its already set up to sync with an Exchange Server. The sync process was pretty quick and I was able to see the synced items in the web immediately. Currently, My Phone service storage is only 200 MB, but it would be certainly useful if the storage is increased in the near future. I would love to see Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Skydrive, Windows Live Contacts integrated into My Phone.

If you have not signed up yet for My Phone, then hurry up!

Some useful links if you do ever need help for My Phone

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