Backup Your Mobile Phone

How Can I Back Up Data From My Cell Phone?

Many people have a lot of vital data that exists only on their mobile phones: contacts, email, notes, appointments, documents, pictures, and especially text messages. If a phone gets lost, as they often do, it would be a great relief to have backup copies of the data it contains.

You didn't say what type of phone you have, but there are plenty of options. Do you want your backup of data online, where you can access it from anywhere; or on your desktop computer where no one but you has access to it? Either way, there is a solution for most mobile phones.

• If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, it will be automatically backed up by iTunes each time you sync the device.


• iDrive offers online backup and restore for iPhones and Blackberries. The Basic service is free and stores up to 2 GB of data. The next step up is $4.95/month for a single user storing up to 150 GB, and it runs up to $14.95/mo. For 500 GB.
• Many Windows Mobile phones ship with Microsoft ActiveSync, software that synchronizes documents, pictures, and contacts automatically between your phone and PC.
• Verizon customers can use Backup Assistant, a downloadable app that backs up your mobile phone's address book. One feature that I like about Backup Assistant is that you can view your contacts online, and view, print, add, delete, or edit them from the web. The app keeps your phone and the web copy of your contacts in sync. And if you lose your phone or upgrade to a new one, Backup Assistant will restore your contact list to your new phone. One big thing missing from Backup Assistant is the ability to backup any music and apps that you have on your phone. Backup Assistant is free, as long as you register your account on the Verizon Wireless website.
• Most phones come with a CD that contains software that you can use to connect your phone to your computer. Load the software on your computer, connect the phone to the computer with a USB cable, and you can manage the content on your phone, such as address book and music. If your phone didn't come with software, see BitPim below.

Backing Up Text Messages

But conspicuously absent from the above methods is backup of text messages! For that, you must turn to the free online Microsoft MyPhone service or another online backup/restore service. To use MyPhone, you will have to create a Microsoft Live login ID if you don't already have one. Then you can download the MyPhone application to your phone, install it, and begin syncing on a schedule or manually. MyPhone is in beta and doesn't always work. But you can save all your data including text messages; even search for words in text messages.

Another option is TreasureMyText.com, which was launched in 2003 just to store your phone's text messages "forever". You just forward a text message to a TreasureMyText phone number. Then you can access your saved texts on the Web. You can also share your text messages with other TreasureMyText users, or keep them private as a whole or individually. You can choose to send a copy of a saved text message to your email address. A little tedious, due to the one-by-one forwarding, but it works.

Finally, BitPim is a program that lets you backup data from many LG, Samsung, Sanyo and other CDMA chipset based phones. This includes the PhoneBook, Calendar, WallPapers, RingTones and the Filesystem, including text messages.

Do you have comments or questions about backing up your phone? Post your thoughts below...