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Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta

One of our LiveSide readers, Pradeep, came across this Microsoft service. Thank you for notifying us Pradeep.

Microsoft® Phone Data Manager Beta is an application that is designed to take away the worry of losing data on your phone - specifically contacts, music, pictures and videos. It does that by synchronizing your phone contacts with Microsoft's Windows Live Contacts store in the cloud, or by helping you download files from the phone to your local computer.
Contacts: Microsoft® Phone Data Manager Beta synchronizes the contacts present in your phone with your contact store on Windows Live Contacts, which is the same store that your Hotmail contacts uses. This way, your phone contacts are always present on the internet, accessible via the contacts link on Hotmail. If you lose, or simply change your phone, all you need to do is to synchronize the contacts using Microsoft® Phone Data Manager Beta, and all the contacts that you stored in your Windows Live Contacts store will be downloaded to your phone. You can synchronize your contacts as many times as you like so that the changes you make (edits, additions or deletions) on your phone, or on the computer on Windows Live Contacts are always reflected on both your phone and the Windows Live Contacts store.
Music, Pictures and Video: In its current form, Microsoft® Phone Data Manager Beta will download the music, pictures and videos present in your phone to a local folder on the computer you are using this application on
Communication with your phone: Microsoft® Phone Data Manager Beta can communicate with your phone via a wireless standard known as Bluetooth, or via a USB cable.
In order for you to synchronize contacts, you will need to have a Windows Live ID (any Hotmail ID is a valid Windows Live ID). If you do not have one, you will be prompted to create one while you use the application.

Lovely new use of Windows Live Contacts store in the cloud! So what are the requirements?

Phone requirements:
For contacts synchronization, your phone needs to support the SyncML standard, and for file download it needs to support OBEX. It also needs Bluetooth or USB connectivity. In general if your phone has a Windows Mobile OS it’ll work. On Windows Mobile phones, Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta will work only via a USB data cable connection. You can find a list of phones they tested here.

System requirements:
Windows XP SP2 or SP3, Windows Vista 32 bits, there is no 64 bits version of the software available at this moment. 256 MB of RAM and 200 MB of available disk space. Minimum screen resolution of 800x600. Bluetooth Connectivity: inbuilt Bluetooth hardware support (e.g. most laptops have Bluetooth inbuilt), or an external USB Bluetooth dongle compatible with the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack. USB Connectivity: make sure you use a cable that works with your phone and have the latest available cable drivers installed.

Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
FAQ
User Guide
Free Download

Comments

EmJayPrice wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 12:09 PM

This is one prong of the MS version of Mobile ME. They should also be able to get this to work with the calendar as well. It uses sync ML. They could do the whole live thing.

SuNcO wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 12:15 PM

Going to check if it works with my BlackJack II at home

Drazick wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 12:52 PM

What about SMS's?

sp1der wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 1:01 PM

what is the difference between contact sync by Microsoft Phone Data Manager and sync by windows live mobile?????

apollo wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 2:05 PM

@sp1der: Windows Live Mobile directly connects the phone with the WL-Servers, while Phone Data Manager connects to the phone using USB.

sp1der wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 3:20 PM

@apollo: ok well, I already sync using USB with Windows Mobile devie Manager (Active Sync)... :-) Sorry but I don't see any innovation... :-(

BV2312 wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 5:24 PM

it's like Nokia PC Suite but limit version basically it bypasses using Outlook Connector

Ryan wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 6:54 PM

*OFFTOPIC*

When will the LiveSide Webslice be ready?

Seika wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-09-2008 7:31 PM

How about the conflict resolution ? And how will it match existing contact from the phone and from Live Contact ?

I don't want to end up with hundreds of duplicates and have to manually clean it up later.

BV2312 wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-10-2008 2:20 AM

@Seika

I sync my contacts using Outlook with Nokia PC Suite, by using this, this duplicated all my contacts twice.

So i would suggest update all the details on your Windows Live ID account and delete contacts from your phone and then sync as this way you won't duplicate the data/contacts

SuNcO wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-10-2008 10:04 PM

I installed it.. nothing new. Just the sync with Live (in fact i have 10 new contacts without a name, just blank). What i want ? An app that allows you to: create/edit themes, create/edit contacts, read/send sms, and the ovbious, sync.. in fact, i want to select exactly what things (1x1) to sync. This only demostrate that MSFT can connect to almost any device ? :S

Day2Die wrote re: Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
on 09-17-2008 8:49 PM

I have successfully install and run Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta on Windows Vista x64 (not tested on Windows XP x64). The installer, is seem, is the only obstacle  that prevent it.

To install it on Vista x64,

1. Obtain and install Orca

2. Extract Phone Data Manager Setup.exe

3. Right click on mobsyncsetup.msi and click Edit with Orca

4. Go to and select LaunchCondition in the left

5. Right click Installed OR NOT VersionNT64 and click Drop Row

6. Save the file and run setup.exe

You will need to download the x64 driver for your phone.

Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta work on my Razr V3. If you have Razr V3, download x64 driver here: developer.motorola.com/.../Handset_USB_Driver_64

Orca can be download from here: www.softpedia.com/.../Orca.shtml

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