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I am beta testing the newly announced MyPhone application. I haven’t been using it too long, but here are my initial thoughts and experience.

The 1st thing was the CAB to install. I could have taken an over there air download or download to PC and transfer it. I chose to download to my laptop and install the CAB from there. The file size was only 557kb. Pretty small. I moved the CAB to my Fuze and it installed flawlessly.

When I 1st run the program, it warned me to disable activesync or terminate the calendar, contacts, and task relationships with my exchange server. I did that, no problem. Then it had me log in for the 1st time. Over an EDGE connection, syncing 68 photos and all the contacts, tasks, etc took a nice chunk of time initially.

At the bottom right of the programs menu, you will see the Microsoft MyPhone Icon. The middle screenshot details the sync progress. On the right is a screen that is similar to Activesync and tells when the last sync occurred. The linked “Show Details” brings up info on what was changed on the last sync.

This is a pop up menu that allows you to configure some things about MyPhone. What you see in the middle and right screenshots is the “options”. This is where you choose what you will sync. The middle screen shows the contacts, calendar, and Tasks greyed out. This is because I sync those with Exchange server.  To trick MyPhone, I had to delete my phone’s relationship between activesync and my exchange server. Once that was done, it deleted all my contacts, tasks, etc. Then I had to sync with my pc to restore this info. I was then able to sync those contacts, tasks, and Calendar events with MyPhone.

From the Menu in the earlier screenshot, you have the choice of Account Menu (left), the Scheduling Info (middle), and on the right is the about screen.

Read on for more, including the web interface…

After you get the phone set up (5-10 minutes), then you head to MyPhone.Microsoft.com and have at it. Log in and manage, view,download, etc.

The web based control center is pretty simple, yet effective. The home screen shows a lot of info at a quick glance. 200mb is going to fill up fast with photos and music if you sync that stuff though.

The contact section allows you to search, view, edit, delete and all sorts of other things to your contacts and the changes will sync to your phone or phones.

I don’t have anything scheduled with Microsoft’s calendar, so not much to see here. You can add, edit, etc on this page.

Had I synced all my photos from my phone, this would be huge. I decided to sync a couple and stop the sync for now. I will finish that sync later.

Here you can see what music you have on the phone or card. You can even upload songs from here.

If I had more than one phone to use right now, it would show all of them here.

Overall, I think this is quite a valuable service. I don’t expect to use it to it’s full extent myself since I already have an exchange account, but for others, this is nice. I will use it for a few days to see how it pans out though. It syncs fast and the web based control panel is pretty quick too. I think this is very similar to DashWire. Those guys might not like this service much, huh?

Anyhow. That’s it. Fast and Simple. For more info about the service, head to MyPhone.Microsoft.com.

Chris Leckness (3527 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.