Learn from the Sidekick saga: Back up your smart phone

Back up your smart phone and avoid losing data in a disaster.
[PHOTO courtesy of magerleague]

Last week’s T-Mobile incident, in which data from the carrier’s Sidekick smart phones stored on a Microsoft server was lost, ended late in the week with the carrier announcing that most or all of the lost data had been recovered. But the incident should serves to show, that as cell and (especially) smart phones become more like mini-computers, and add the likes of sophisticated cameras, the need to back up the data they carry increases.

Here are some tips on backing up smart phones. (We’ll cover options for cell phone backup in another post soon.)

It’s preferable to have data from your phone stored not only with the carrier itself, but also in duplicate on your computer. Generally, smart phones are easier to back up in this manner than cell phones, thanks to their sophisticated operating systems, which resemble those of computers.

One method to backing up at least your contacts—among the most valuable phone data, after all—is to sync the smart phone to your e-mail account on your computer, typically via Outlook, and then export the contacts from Outlook to the desktop.

You may already be syncing by having your office e-mail pushed to your smart phone via MS Exchange or, with some phones, via syncing to a Gmail account. With the iPhone, you can sync via iTunes as you add or remove music or other content from your phone.

If you’re not synced by these means, you may need a separate syncing program, perhaps at some cost. iPhone owners who don’t often enough sync contacts and the like physically via iTunes have the option to use MobileMe, a $99-a-year Apple syncing service. For phones that use the Windows Mobile OS, such as HTC TouchPro 2, there’s free software called Active Sync.

For owners of T-Mobile Sidekicks, a carrier rep told me that their Intellisync software (which costs a one time fee of $9.99) will allow you to sync with Outlook and MS Exchange. Other T-Mobile phones are compatible with the carrier’s “mobile backup” service, which stores your info on a server and allows you to access it from the Mytmobile.com website. From there, you can export to an Excel spreadsheet or at least out print out a hard copy of the contacts.

Once you’re synced, your can back up contacts to your PC by going to the Contacts section of Outlook on your PC; then under File, select import and export, where you can choose to export the contacts as a CSV, Excel file, Access file, etc. With a Gmail account: Click on the Contacts link on the left side of the screen. Then, click on Export on the upper right, and choose the file type. Your choice will be the appropriate type of what’s known as a Comma Separated Value, a rather generic file type that can be imported to different programs including Excel. So, the choices include Google CSV, Outlook CSV, and vCard.

This sync-and-save method doesn’t take care of other content on your smart phone, such as photos. Other software may, however, allow to save everything that’s on your smart phone to your desktop. For iPhones, there’s iTunes. If you own a Blackberry, there’s free Blackberry Desktop Software.

If you own any other smart phone, call the carrier or check with the phone manufacturer’s Web site for proprietary syncing software. —Dave Toner and Mike Gikas

Comments

[Wilma]

Wow, I didn't understand any of that.