Windows Phone Live services: Sync + Storage + Remote Wipe

Windows Phone Live was announced to provide several services at the time when the first devices are launched (more on the launch timeline in a new post). The features offered will reportedly be free and will be a one-up from the MyPhone free service for Windows Mobile 6.x available now. MyPhone can be found [here] and used on current devices.

Windows Phone Live will offer a SkyDrive account with 25GB of available storage space (yes, you read correctly twenty five gigabytes). All available for passport owners and registered users of Windows Phone 7 devices. The service will sync their phone contents to the cloud service allowing to store contacts, pictures, appointments and calendars, Office files (including OneNote files), and any other files. All this without the need of an intervening PC, which will be able to sync to the phone via the Zune software for PCs. Additional services will include archival of previous versions of objects allowing a rollback to an older version of these objects in case of loss or accidental deletion. One really interesting service that none of the other devices offer is called “Find My Phone” which obviously allows you to locate, map and even ring your phone, but most interesting of all, it also allows you to lock and ultimately wipe the contents of your phone if you are convinced it fell into unauthorized hands.

While these features are somewhat equivalent to the ones offered in other platforms, they are not as comprehensive and/or free. This is a very smart strategic move for Microsoft if they want to recapture part of the market share lost since the last version was released.