AT&T offers mobile backup solution
20 comments
Filed in AT&T, EDGE, Interviews
Phones get lost, broken, dropped in toilets, and otherwise afflicted on a daily basis. In addition to dealing with the emotional repercussions of losing your treasured mobile device, the fallout from losing all of your contacts can be catastrophic. There are a number of online backup services currently available, but AT&T is now set to offer a carrier supported backup solution to subscribers. AT&T Mobile Backup functions as a small application downloaded to your handset. Once activated, the service begins an automatic backup process that can be scheduled at the interval of your choosing. Once the system has uploaded your info, it becomes available via an online interface. You are then free to add, delete, and import contacts from your phone or the web, with all changes being reflected on your device. The service is currently available for a host of handsets, including the majority of AT&T’s non smartphone devices. Hit the link for complete instructions, and a full rundown of supported phones. We heard the launch date for this service would be June, 8th but it looks like it’s available now for $1.99 a month. A small price to pay for the security of your precious names and numbers.
“Hit the link for complete instructions, and a full rundown of supported phones.”
what link?
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no link! AT&T Mobile Backup on google search returns nothing either
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Kind of boring news, considering VZW has had this for quite a while, and they even offer it for free to people who register online for free.
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Yeah same is true with tmobile they started their free T-mobile address book sevice back in March of this year. The only way that i would see myself using a feature like this if I was using a basic phone that didn’t have any sync or backup options.
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My SIM card already has this ‘feature’ and it doesn’t cost me $1.99/month.
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^^^ Umm… what if u lose your precious sim card? Can u make ur lost sim card magically appear in your hands? I think it’s about time for CingATT but why charge for it?
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I do this for free now (contacts, calendar, tasks, notes). Works even if the sim is lost and synchronizes at intervals I chose.
http://www.scheduleworld.com
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@Blocq:
Fair enough, but $24/year for a feature that is free on a SIM card and for a lot of phones above basic phone (my old Sanyo’s on Sprint had backup software, as did my S40 Nokia and my current S60 Nokia) is $24/year too much for me.
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umm….everyboby…click the “read” link, it brings you right to the page
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The great thing i see about this is that no data is charged, so for users that dont have a medianet plan.. no worries.
Sites like the one statde above are good or those of us that do have internet on our plans.
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Backup is very important. You never know when you might drunkenly drop your phone in a bowl of ice cream or a beer… (happened to both of my friends, hehe).
I won’t sign up for this because I use desktop sync. I limit my phone decisions based on which ones will offer contact/calendar syncronization with OS X but thankfully many basic phones offer sync functionality. Even nicer still, is that Motorola seems to be pushing the mini-USB as a connection standard so if you don’t have a data cable it should be relatively cheap to buy.
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Verizon Wireless has had this since 2004 (http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=3488). And if you have a web account set up with them (no charge), they offer the back-up service for free!! (https://www.getbackupnow.com/)
Good to see AT&T is only 3 years behind!!
- A Happy Verizon Wireless Customer
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Hey - also consider all the other stuff that is in your phone. The SIM approach won’t back that up and is tied to the SIM card which you can lose. The OTA solutions are much better and Verizon’s seems to be top notch. The cable-based stuff is also out there but clumsy and the data transfer doesn’t always work well.
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Even Sprint had this one also…
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As far as I know Zyb (http://zyb.com) seems to be the most widely used mobile backup solution. Haven’t used it myself but it seems to be a free service.
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The only reason why Verizon had this technology 3 years before att is launching it is due to the fact that Verizon phones don’t have sim cards excluding the 8830 of course. If a Verizon customer wants a new phone they need to contact customer care or go to the store to have it activated, while with a GSM phone you just insert your sim card and are good to go. A service like this is the only way for a Verizon customer to keep is contact when changing phones
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I wouldn’t trust AT&T to wipe my ass.
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The Verizon solution appears to be handled by MightyPhone, based on the domain you get switched to. How this compares to generic MightyPhone, and is this good/bad, I don’t know.
Their info states that in case of a conflict between phone and Web one side always wins…I forget which side (: Easy to grasp, but not a sophisticated solution.
As for SIMs, they hold limited info for contacts. The SIMs I’ve checked in phones were limited to 250 contacts - far less than most phones. The SIM also has limited data fields for each contact - also much more limited than most phones.
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Looks like this launched today. And Matt Lauer talked about it on The TODAY Show last week, link on http://mobilebackup.att.com. Looks like a good solution, I like the website.
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AT&T backup services leaves a hell of lot to be desired and theie tech people have no comprehension of what’s going on.
I have 166 contact manually put into the backup
and only 41 will download and no one with AT&T
can resolve the problemm but they are damn good about passing you on to another idopt and/or putting you on hold and no one ever comes back.
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