[General Topics] RADRaze2KX:
Rundown: great service to store your contacts and SMS messages when ROM Switching/Upgrading, or when switching phones.

Full Review: Don't know where else to put this.. I'm reviewing the MyPhone service from Microsoft because I used it to synchronize my Contacts and my SMS messages prior to upgrading my Touch Pro 2 from Windows Mobile 6.1 to WM 6.5.

Here are the results:

Before upgrading my phone, I synchronized my contacts to Outlook 2007 on Vista over ActiveSync, and synchronized my SMS messages to Outlook 2007 on Vistsa using Jeyo's Outlook Extender... I thought I was ready to rock and roll until I realized Jeyo's program wasn't sending SMS messages back to my phone as it was supposed to.

Rather than fiddle with it longer than the 30 minutes I already had, I searched for an alternative method. Enter Microsoft's MyPhone service. I logged into the service using my existing hotmail e-mail address, sent a link to my phone, downloaded the software directly to my phone, and began synchronizing. The time to upload 511 contacts and about 3200 SMS messages took about 25-30 minutes over Sprint's 3G network.

After I verified everything I needed to back up was on Microsoft's MyPhone site, I began the upgrade of my phone.

Upgrade complete, took about 10 minutes... and during that time, I was reading about adding a new phone to the MyPhone service...

So I just installed WM 6.5... Right after the upgrade completed, I sent the MyPhone service's "Add new device" link to my same phone, which is now running WM 6.5 instead of WM 6.1

Link received on phone, downloaded, installed, it asked for a restart, so i did... and... here goes...

Phone's on again... Let's see...

*taps start*

*open "My Phone"*

*taps next*

*taps accept*

*enters hotmail info*

*taps next*

*uncheck photos, videos, music, documents* (because I don't want those synchronized)

*taps next*

automatic synchronization? sounds good.. I have unlimited data..

*taps finish*

and now it says "Synchronizing"... already at 80 of 510 contacts (I found one duplicate earlier while the upgrade was completing, thanks to the built in "Find Duplicates" button on the MyPhone site you access through your PC) ... by the time I finished that sentence, it's already downloaded 325 of my contacts... We shall soon see if it kept my contact pictures and such, which would be great, although not a complete necessity... I'm most concerned about my thousands of texts... and it just completed the contacts... now texts... already at 90 of 2832 (i cleaned those up quite a bit also) now at 175... it seems to be downloading about 133 messages per minute over Sprint's 3G connection...

I'll leave it...

It's done... total time to synchronize 510 contacts and 2832 text messages took approximately 25-30 minutes over Sprint's 3G connection. This is honestly pretty bad in comparison to USB synchronization, but considering it's over 3G and can occur whenever/wherever, and was easier and more convenient than installing outlook, configuring the synchronization settings (because this is only one of dozens of PC's with ActiveSync/Mobile Device Center I've plugged this phone into), trying to figure out if I wanted to keep it synched with another PC or not, yada yada... AND it will synchronize everyday automatically, I must say I've definitely got to recommend Microsoft's MyPhone ... now, did it keep my messages in order, are my contacts still with pictures? The answer is...

Yes!! Perfect air synchronization... it took a bit longer than I thought, but MyPhone essentially synchronized all my stuff with no hassle and I can access the data from anywhere! whoo-hoo!! not only that, but my messages are all in order, and the ones that were read are still marked as read, and the ones that were unread are still marked as unread!!! I LIKE IT!! A LOT!! :D I can't attest to MMS messages since I didn't have any at the time I did my sync, but I'm sure I'll get one later

So, Microsoft's MyPhone gets a double-thumbs-up from me for keeping my contacts and sweet SMS messages intact PERFECTLY during a phone update, making it nearly hassle-free and fool-proof, and not costing a single red cent.

Thanks, Microsoft. Did I just say that? I need coffee... it's 6:45 in the morning. Good luck, fellow gadget lovers!