Top third-party Mobile Cloud Sync Services

Nokia has Ovi, Apple offers Me and Microsoft has MyPhone, but all these are bounded to their own OSs and leaves you with a lot of steps to transfer your data when you got a new phone running on different OS. We took a look at cross-platform mobile cloud-sync services which will let you sync your phone's data over the air. You can choose which one suits your needs the most from the lists below.

Mobical.net

After the popular mobile syncing service Zyb.com dies out, Mobical is the one of the best free mobile synching services one can find to sync  mobile phone’s data over-the-air. The service offers backing-up of your phone’s address book, calendar entries, bookmarks, notes and phone settings.

Phones support range is wide as Mobical uses Sync ML protocol and most phones today are supporting this standard.  It works with Android, Symbian and most entry level phones that uses SyncML protocol. To check out for the supported list of phones you can see for yourself here. Even if your phone is not listed, you can still set up the setting manually as long as the SyncML  client is present on your phone.

Setting up the account is as easy as heading to mobical.net and entering username,  country code, phone number, time zone and captcha . Once registered, you can select your phone model and the sync setting will be sent to your phone via SMS. We did not have a very smooth set up process as Mobical.net did not send the setting  on time and there was usually at least 10 to 15 hours delay (except for one fine morning when mobical.net sent us the sms right away!).  The Mobical.net also offers where users can share contacts and calendars. You can use either GPRS, 3G or Wi-Fi to connect from your mobile phones to mobical.net server.

There was no separate app for the mobile but user can specify the synchronization direction (both ways, to server only, to phone only).  Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, Notes and SMS are saved without any hassle and the web interface supports most of the editing features you would ask for. It still don’t have synching with  social networking sites , nor does it have importing data from other web services like Google or Yahoo, however,  mobical does what it promised exceptionally well.Except for the long delay for the service to response to our password and setting request; once you are done with the set up, you will have smooth ride with the service.

Rseven.com
Synching services for phones usually sync contacs, caledars and notes etc, however, rseven does things differently by synching your call logs, SMS, MMS, emails, image, audio and video. There is a free and a paid version – the free account is limited to 50MB of storage space and users can view their calendars from the past three months only.

Setting up the service is trouble-free ; all you got do is singing up on rseven.com and download the appropriate version of its mobile app from the server to your phone.

Currently, rseven Windows Mobile 6.x phones (Professional and Standard Edition), Nokia S60 (Symbian) 3rd & 5th Edition phones and Android 1.5 or later.. iPhone and Blackberry are not supported yet.

While testing out the rSeven app on our phones ( Android and Symbian phones), we did not face any issue and calls logs and recorded conversations were uploaded successfully via our EDGE and Wi-Fi connection. SMS and contacts were saved successfully on our rseven account on the site as well. The mobile phone app has a list-based interface and it has option to select which data one wants to archive( backup/sync) on the server. Like said, the free account let us saved our calendar entries starting from the past three months only which is one disadvantage  over the full paid version. One noteworthy feature is the option to select which entries you want to sync with the server as this comes handy when you don’t want to save all the information on your phone. Image, audio and video can also be synched albeit its limited 50MB storage on the free account.  The web interface has a unique Timeline view which shows you all your communication logs with time on daily basis. Rseven also gives an option to match contacts with your Facebook contacts and also you can make contacts (which you don’t want to sync now but don’t want to delete either ) inactive.

Rseven supports location based tagging for your communication records and via its integrated google maps on its web interface, it shows you where you made those calls and sent those SMSs. Even though it’s not a must-have feature, it is nice to have. We also like the export feature which let us send the records to the e-mail. However, the rather basic web interface, limited calendar entries back up and unable to sync with online contacts like google contacts albeit supporting matching with Facebook contacts are its cons.

Overall,  rseven deserves a try if you want extra features like backing up communication logs that includes time and location.

Funambol
Funambol is an open-source  based mobile sync and push e-mail solutions. Though the service is more for service providers than the end-user, Funambol gives a demo version for 90 days for anyone to try out. The service supports synching your contacts, calendars, notes and pictures.  Funambol gives users only 90 days for the demo account and there is no plan for paid version either. However, being the sync solution provider, there are series of sites or providers using funambol sync service as their backbone and the list can be found here. Funambol site gives 25MB of storage space for users and to keep the demo account alive, all users need to do is follow these steps on the list found on funambol site here.

Instead of receiving sync setting via SMS, there is a dedicated funambol mobile app to download and all you need to do after downloading on your phone is entering your username and password you signed up with on the funambol site.

Funambol sync service supports Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Java mobile client and BREW OS phones. Funambol has desktop client for Windows and Mac OS users as well to let you sync with Outlook for the former and Address Book for the latter.

The web site interface is clean and simple; getting around is easy as each feature is neatly categorized.  Contacts from Yahoo, Google and Facebook can be imported directly from the site and calendars can be synchronized with your Google calendars, pictures from Picasa and Flickr can be imported , and mails from AOL, Yahoo and Gmail. Synching mail with mobile and the server requires installing separate Funambol JavaME Email client on the phone and the support is limited.  And we did not find option to back up or export users data which is one useful feature we found on services like rseven and memotoo.  All in all, it is an impressive set of features that funambol offered and we just wished the service lasted more than 90 days. 

The mobile client gives option to sync contacts, calendars and notes – while we faced no issue synching our contacts and calendar entries from phone to server,  the notes sync failed to happened due to unknown reasons. Unlike rseven, funambol does not synchronise call records and sms, nor does the SMS which may be a concern for some. Pictures synching happened smoothly, however, remember you have only a fixed 25MB of storage on the funambol account. Editing contacts feature was basic and there is no option to merge contacts.

Overall, funambol as a mobile synching service for end-user may not give many features and its 90 days validity with no options to extend the service other than funambol guidelines is not one stop solution to back up and sync your data, however, if you opt for one of those services which uses funambol as their backbone, the experience will be different altogether.

Memotoo
A popular online service to let you sync and organize personal data across different devices and platforms, memotoo has many reasons to be on the top list when it comes to cloud synching you mobiles data. It will let you sync calendar events, contacts, notes and to-do items and your mobile bookmarks  across mobile phones, browsers and and gives online storage of 100MB for a paid account.

Phone support is wide and if your phone supports Sync ML, then you are ready to go.  The service works with iPhone, Blackberry, Android phones, Windows Mobile and Symbian phones. You can also perform synchronization with Outlook, Palm and iPod as well.
After setting up the account, you can receive the sync setting via SMS or you can either do it manually. There is a standalone app for iPhone and Android while the rest of the mobile users can receive settings via SMS or manually add the settings to their phone for which the instruction is clearly mentioned on the site. The mobile app interface is straightforward and easy to use, however, the overstuffed web  interface would take a little while to get used to.

Syncing our data happened without any hiccups either from our phone or from our PC. However, here is the catch – the free account on memotoo gives so many useful features and add-ons but each feature has their limitations until and unless you go for the paid service. For example, for a free account, synching over 50 contacts will send you error report on your e-mail as that is the maximum the service offers for free account, however, despite receiving error messages, all of our contacts still managed to get uploaded to the our memotoo account! You can also import and export your contacts in various standard formats like CSV, vCard etc. You can tag each contact with their location and there is a  a handy duplicate contact  finder feature as well. The calendar can be synchronized with variety of apps, services and devices.  One useful feature that many would find is its ability to synchronize your Memotoo account  with your Facebook which will let you import Facebook friends list to your contacts and  events. Using all these features happened without glitch apart from the fact that our e-mail got bombarded with junk of error messages every time our free account received data  beyond its limit. For details on the paid account you can check out this link.

The fully-loaded Memotoo offers more than what a normal users would require, however, its multiple devices and platform support makes it a viable option if you love accessing your personal data across different  platforms and devices.

Usynworld
The simplest and least featured Usyncworld is a free sync solution to let you save your contacts without any hassle. The free service offered by Usync is  a basic synchronization service with no frills. It is one service to go for if you just want to back up your phone’s contacts and nothing else.

The service works with phones that supports Java and all user needs to is downloading a small .jar file from getjar.com or unisyncworld.com. Signing up is possible via the mobile app and the web site which is convenient.

Like said, all unisync synchronize is your contacts and nothing else which makes it one simple solution for a basic phone. The mobile app has just options like Sync, Settings and About US. There is no advance settings like two-way or one-way synchronization option – it is just a simple but functional synchronization system. The web interface is also simple with contacts list/grid view option and editing options. There are no power-features like synching with social networking sites and importing/exporting features whatsoever. Even if its free, adding direction for synchronization option would make the service more useful.

Overall, the free contacts synching service from Usync is too basic, and with many other choices available in the cloud, it would not be hard to give this a pass.