You don’t have to use a smartphone for more than a week to amass a staggering amount of crap on it, from text messages and phone numbers to personal settings and photo libraries, and as with your laptop or desktop, a significant portion of this crap is stuff that you want to keep. And mobile phone backup isn’t just a matter of keeping copies of data that you consciously archive every day, like contacts, photos and notes – it’s about keeping copies of information that you didn’t even know you wanted. How many times have you needed to dig through an old text message conversation? Referred back to your received call list to recover a number you didn’t save? People: back it up. You’ll feel better.

By platform:

iPhone

If you’ve got an iPhone, there’s a good chance you’ve already sat through – and been annoyed by – its backup routine. iTunes updates your iPhone’s backups at every sync, which makes users’ lives a bit easier, and guarantees some kind of safety net by default. But! As with most fully automated systems, iTunes backup is kind of enigmatic. It just sort of… happens.

What it’s doing is performing a full backup equivalent. In other words, instead of just mirroring your entire device as a big image file, it’s extracting all the useful bits, so it can restore your iPhone as if it had undergone a full, mirrored backup. This includes, among other things, bookmarks, app settings and data (including in-app purchases, but not the apps themselves), contacts, call history, Mail accounts, SMSes, videos and photos. In other words, pretty much everything. Backups are performed automatically, and restoring to one is a simple matter of plugging in your iPhone, alt-clicking on its icon in iTunes and selecting “Restore from Backup”.

Crucially, this is different from selecting “Restore” in the device summary page: doing that will restore from a clean, factory-default image, which will delete all your personal data. Not what we’re trying to do here! (Though if you attempt to do this, you will be prompted to perform a backup, which should be a red flag.)

iTunes stores its backups as archived files in semi-cryptic directories, so if you want to pull them out of the close iTunes system for proper backup, i.e. to an external HDD or online storage solution, you can find them here:

On a Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/

On Windows XP: Documents and Settings(username)Application DataApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup

On Windows Vista: Users(username)AppDataRoamingApple ComputerMobileSyncBackup

To add a backup to to iTunes, simply copy it back to its default directory, and it should show up as a restore option, labelled by date, when you’re setting up a wiped or recently capital “R” Restored iPhone or iPod Touch.

Android

Google’s philosophy with Android backup and sync has been translucent, perhaps to a fault: Since it depends so much on web services, it doesn’t need to be backed up! It’s already backed up, in the cloud! We’re freakin’ Google, y’all! THIS IS THE FUTURE! (Carried to its logical conclusion, this is the Chrome OS ethos. Anyway.) This is fine, and can be put to good use: Gmail and Gcal are always safe, and your contacts can be added to your Google account too – should you designate them to be saved as Google contacts, not just SIM or Phone contacts. To do this:

1. Open your Contacts list
2. Press the Menu button
3. Select Import
4. Tick the “Google Contacts” box

But for anyone who wants to back up more than their Google-service-based info, this doesn’t really help. For that, you’ll need to go third-party. There are lots of backup apps for Android, but they’re all paid, either immediately or after a free trial. I assume just go with the best free(ish) solutions, all of which you can find by searching for their names in the Android Market.

Backup apps on Android are split into two types: the all-in-one apps that sync your data to a single file, and the piecemeal apps. Unfortunately, the AIO apps tend to be paid; doing this for free takes multiple downloads. Download these three apps: SMS Backup and Restore, Call Logs Backup & Restore, and APN Backup & Restore. Each one backs up its respective data to your microSD card (in /sdcard/*appname*BackupRestore/) for easy restoration on another phone. Using these apps is self-explanatory, since there are only three buttons: Backup, Restore and Delete.

Astro File Manager fills a remaining gap: app backup. It’s a free file browser at heart, so the backup option is kind of hidden – once in the app, press the menu button, then click “Tools”. Select “Application Manager/Backup”, and you’ll be able to backup your apps to your SD card. To restore, just install this same app on the device, insert the old SD card, navigate to the same “Application Manager/Backup screen” again, and select the “Backed Up Apps” tab. Astro is also a solid file browser, you can can manually move your data – like photos and videos – to a microSD card, where you should probably be storing them anyway. [Pic via]

There! Sprite Mechanic does the same in a slightly simpler way, but I’m hearing reports that it’s a bit buggy on certain handsets. Still, it’s free, so it may be worth a try.

Lastly, if you’ve got a rooted phone, Backup for Root Users backs up virtually everything, and it’s totally free. That catch? You need to have a rooted phone, or else it won’t work. Which is a crying shame.

Palm Pre/Pixi

Where Android’s cloud-based not-really-a-backup system has gaping holes, the Pre’s is actually pretty good: Backup is performed automatically, every day, and linked to your user account. This covers the absolute basics, though. For example, a list of apps is kept server-side, but the app data itself isn’t back up; browser bookmarks are remembered, but no form data or website passwords. Media isn’t backed up at all. Here’s the full list. The solution is a bit hackish, but it works fine for most data. From PreCentral, a brief guide on backing up using either Microsoft’s Sync Toy for PC, or with slight, obvious modifications, ChronoSync for Mac:

1. Plug in the Pre and select USB Drive.
2. Download SyncToy and install.
3. Click SyncToy on your desktop to run SyncToy for the first time.
4. Click Create New Folder Pair. For the Left Folder, Browse to the Pre’s Drive (maybe E: or F:)
5. For the right folder browse to your documents folder and create a new subdirectory such as PreBackup and select it.
6. Choose to Synchronize and name your folder pair something easy to remember like PreBackup.
7. Click Run.

What you’re doing here is essentially backing up the Pre’s internal storage, bit for bit. Unfortunately, this doesn’t back up settings and some application data, so restoring from this image won’t ensure that you don’t lose some data; just media, ringtones, etc.

Between this, Palm’s backup and the natural backup inherent in being tied to online services like Gmail and Flickr, the only thing not really backed up properly is specific application data and SMS conversations.

Windows Mobile

Microsoft has always offered some kind of backup out of the box, and as of the release of version 6.5, there are multiple options. The core backup utility, of course, is Windows Mobile Device centre, or as it’s known in XP, ActiveSync. Pairing your device with these apps is quite simple, and takes care of most of the data you could want to back up, including contacts, calendar appointments and media.

In XP, download and install ActiveSync, and when you plug in your phone, start the ActiveSync app, which you should be prompted to open anyway. Set up a pairing relationship, select the data you want to backup, and you’re good to go.

In Vista, you’ll need to download Windows Mobile Device Center and do the same; in Windows 7, you should be prompted to install Windows Mobile Device centre as soon as you plug in a WinMo handset.

Now, let’s assume you’re not using a Windows PC, or you don’t want to bother with setting up a sync relationship with a computer. You’ve got two free options, which together back up even more data than ActiveSync, without and external machine.

My Phone, another Microsoft app, is available for free to any Windows Mobile 6.0, 6.1 or 6.5 user. It’s a misleadingly basic-seeming little app, which backs up nearly everything you store on your phone: [By default]: contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, photos, videos, text messages, songs, browser favourites and documents between your phone and your My Phone web account. Restoring from My Phone is just a matter of logging into your Live account from within the app. You get 200MB of free storage, after which you’ve got to pay. Still: pretty fantastic.

If you want to back up your phone’s data without a PC or a cloud-based service, there’s PIM Backup. This utility feels and looks kind of ancient, but it’s great at what it does. And what does it do? Everything:

– backup/restore appointments
- backup/restore call logs
- backup/restore contacts
- backup/restore messages (SMS, Mails, …) NEW !!!
- backup/restore speed dials
- backup/restore tasks
- backup/restore custom files

Best of all, it stores your backup in a single file, which can be restored on any device using the same app. The procedure is dead-easy: Download the PIM CAB file to your device, install it, open it, check the data you want to back up off the list, and go. To restore, you go through the exact same interface, selecting “Restore” from the app’s pulldown menu instead of “Back Up”. In the spirit of safety, you’re going to want to back up PIM’s backup files. PIM lets you designate where you’d like to store its backups; select your microSD card if you have one. If not, you may want to transfer your backup to a PC or external storage device. (Unfortunately, the easiest way to do this is probably with ActiveSync or Mobile Device Center, since most WinMo phones don’t allow you to browse the root storage in Explorer.)

Still though aside from the iPhone, Windows Mobile offers the most complete backup solutions.

Symbian

Depending on which brand handset and Symbian shell you’re using, your backup options are going to differ. The Ovi Suite will do the trick. It’s a full, automated backup suite, but it’s PC-only and works exclusively with Nokia phones. Using it is as easy as setting up a sync relationship – just install the suite and plug the Nokia phone in via USB, and follow the wizard prompts – and it’ll keep contacts, calendar items and media backed up. [Pic via]

Non-Nokia Symbian users – Samsung folks, listen up – can use a free app called The Symbian Tool. This will actually pull a full image copy from your Symbian phone, meaning that you can restore your phone bit-for-bit to the state it was in at the time of backup. There are also less severe options for media backup. More details here.

If you have more tips and tools to share, please drop some links in the comments – your feedback is hugely important to our How To guides. And if you have any topics you’d like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy backups, folks!

The $US100 Pixi made sense once upon a time, when the Pre was $US200 and Palm needed a phone for the masses — like the Centro, oncer upon a time — to establish the webOS as a real platform. A leaner, cheaper version of the Pre was a good idea. Now, you can get the real thing — faster, stronger, screenier — for under a hundred US bucks. The Pixi’s existential crisis is not insignificant.

What’s Neutered vs. the Pre

• Slower processor (using an older ARM11 architecture vs. faster ARM Cortex A8)
• Smaller and squintier 400×320, 2.63-inch, 18-bit colour screen (vs. 480×320, 3.1-inch, 24-bit colour)
• 2-megapixel camera (vs. 3-megapixel)
• No Wi-Fi

Pixi Perfect Design (Just About)

There has not been a candybar phone more perfectly designed and executed than the Pixi. It’s exactly the size and shape a phone that aspires to be small should be. It’s a Hot Pocket sliced in half, but flat and glossy on top and round and rubbery on the bottom. It almost feels fake, like a concept that you hope is a real phone but isn’t, except that in this case, it really is. It fits inside of an iPhone, if you wanna get more literal.

Plastic, slightly sticky Rice Krispie keys, arranged in four rows form a keyboard so electrifyingly good it’s thrilling, like finding an actually sweet wind-up toy in your cereal box (Rice
Bubbles, of course) every time you type. The keys are tiny, but have a deceptive amount of rise, so your fat thumbs can feel out individual nubs, which pop in this remarkably satisfying way when you click down. The size-to-goodness ratio might just be the best on any keyboard I’ve used. If there’s any reason to pick the Pixi over the Pre, it’s if you type a shocking amount on your phone, because the Pixi’s is better by like an order of magnitude. Or eleventy.

Between the screen, with its shaved corners, and the keyboard is a stretch of empty space. Until you run your finger along it, and a spark — a line of light, really — emerges. The LED strip, invisible when it’s not indicating something, replaces the ball on the Pre, which I always thought was a weird little speed bump when you stroked the gesture area, anyway. It’s kind of beautiful, the stark aesthetic of it emotionally tinged with sci-fi imagery, from Gort to Cyclop’s visor.

Two things are wrong. The screen lock button on the top left is a little too in touch with the overall robustness of the phone, so it’s hard to push and doesn’t provide enough feedback. On the opposite end of that spectrum, the trap door covering the micro USB port feels flimsy and aggravatingly snaps shut, making plugging in a USB cable a struggle worthy of a Homerian epic every single time.

Tinkerbell Would Be Pissed

The Pixi is slow.

Achingly.

Maddeningly.

Ripyourhairoutandsmashitagainstthewallingly.

It lags, it hangs, it stutters, it freezes. A lot. A simple fact: Multitasking isn’t better than unitasking when it takes longer to get shit done. An example: I wanted to take a picture while I had the browser and and App Catalog open. Simple. The camera froze spectacularly, rendering the entire phone completely unusable for well over 30 seconds — whenever I tried to flick the camera card away (cards are apps), it would shoot halfway off the screen, then appear back in its place. Somewhere between 30-45 seconds later, it regained composure. That’s with just three core apps open, and no active syncing happening in the background.

True, I could sometimes have up to four apps running without problems, at least for a minute or so, before things starting getting cludgy. But it hangs even with just a single app running sometimes. (Just try opening a website.) And every time you open an app, there’s a solid expanse of time that elapses that you can feel, and it gets old real quick. Maybe webOS is just more transparent about load times than the iPhone, which masks them with title screens, but the whole experience of using this phone is like swimming through very pretty jelly, with one arm, wearing a cast-iron suit, or something like that.

Screen, Camera and Other Hardware

You get used to the smaller screen and it’s 80 fewer pixels, mostly. It’s cramped, but you’ll only be directly, painfully cognisant of it from time to time, like when you’re reading some text outside of Palm’s own apps or navigating web pages. It’s not a crappy screen, but it’s not exceptionally bright or vibrant, either. The touch accuracy seemed less spot-on than the Pre too, though that could’ve been the effect of smaller targets because of the tinier screen, like the drop-down menu for apps in the top left corner, which is just a sliver on the Pixi.

The Pixi’s 2-megapixel camera is unimpressive. The comparison shot above was taken with a 2-megapixel iPhone 3G in the exact same lighting and place, snapped within 10 seconds of each other. The camera app, when it’s not freezing up, is quick to shoot once you press the button though, which is definitely something.

And I’ll just say it: No Wi-Fi sucks, since there are lots of place in NY where even Sprint’s 3G can’t penetrate.

Software

The Pixi comes with webOS 1.3.1. Palm’s definitely tuned things up since webOS originally shipped in June with stuff like more support for Yahoo services, the ability to buy songs over 3G, performance improvements and other interface sprucing up, but it’s not a radically difference experience than the one Chen documented exhaustively here. (In other words, read that for the software review, since it’s basically the same, just much slooooower on the Pixi.)

What’s different now is that there are over 300 apps in the App Catalog, and Palm’s dumping fresh ones in every week. So the app situation is greatly improved. The problem is that it’s still behind the rest of the pack — iPhone, Android and BlackBerry — and being fourth-place development priority for cross-platform developers with limited resources it not a great place to be, so Palm’s got a rough road here. Oh, one interesting point, since this is supposed to be the smartphone OS for multitasking, is that while an app is downloading from the App Catalog, you can’t browse for other apps — if you leave the download page, it cancels. So I hope you’ve got good Sprint reception in your house.

The other thing that’s changed is iTunes. Palm’s former official way to sync your media to your phone is broken. Irrevocably. Even if Palm does restore iTunes syncing with its dirty hack (no really, it is a dirty hack, impersonating an iPod with a false USB ID) the entire model is screwed. Putting people buying your phone in the middle of a stupid pissing match that you’re destined to lose isn’t cool. In the meantime, Palm’s official solution is for people to sideload or use third-party apps like doubleTwist.

Don’t Buy It

The Pixi is screwed. It’s totally cannibalised by the technologically superior Pre, which you can find for under $US100. Even if you can get the Pixi for $US30, it’s worth trading up to the Pre for $US40 or $US50 more if you’re absolutely wedded to the idea of a webOS phone, simply for the speed and screen. Mostly the speed, since the Pixi is brain damaged, three-legged dog slow, as nice as the hardware is on the outside.

Not to mention, for a hundred dollars, there are phones that just offer better experiences and aren’t in the same awkward position Palm is in the smartphone fight. I’m talking of course, about the Droid Eris, Android’s $US99 darling on Verizon. The entire reason to buy the Pixi — a value proposition — has completely evaporated. And I almost feel bad about that. Almost.

Incredible keyboard (for the size)

Awesome design and build

webOS is nice

Camera sucks

Palm’s dumb iTunes fight

Slow

I mean, slooooooooooooooooooooow

One of the most exciting things about Android was the idea that it could be ported back to older handsets. This turned out to be harder than expected, except for a few HTCs and amazingly, a Palm Treo from 2004.

The 650, which runs old-school Palm OS, must be straining to boot Google’s mobile OS, working with just 32MB of RAM and a 312MHz processor — a far cry from even the G1 (aka HTC Dream), which isn’t known for its snappy performance. But with time and patience she flickers to life anyway. And for its mere fact of existence, this Frankensteinian monster should be applauded. Onward and downward, brave Android hackers. [Engadget]

Compared against the Droid Eris, the decidedly secondary, little-advertised rebranded Hero that happens to be launching alongside the Droid Droid, the Pixi’s hasn’t been driving much Google traffic at all, according to Google Trends. More odd is that even with reviews starting to hit, exciting deals showing up online and a release date rapidly approaching, the Pixi’s buzz is flat.

A couple of points: Although I searched for “Droid Eris” in quotes, there’s a good chance the Eris is getting a leg up on Google searches by piggybacking on the hyper-hyped Droid Proper. Also, I’ve seen three people, two of whom work with gadgets for a living, write “Pixi” as “Pixie” in the last 24 hours, which is funny! Also probably a bad sign, for the buzz. But still, that explains a disparity, not totally flat interest, or the weirdly tiny bump in attention the phone got when pricing was announced back in October. What gives? [Google Trends]

When you stroke the gesture area between the screen and the keyboard, the glowing indicator stares out of the centre like the eye of Gort, except bad things don’t happen when it lights up. I kind of want to throw it at something, simply because it feels like it can take it. I won’t. We’ll have more later, of course, but for now, here’s some photos.

The $US30 Pixis (Pixies?) are back-ordered already, probably because this is the best deal in town. This news does two things: It raises the possibility of a free-on-contract Pixi sometime in the near future, and calls into question again whether or not the Pixi can ever be a truly good deal. Today, the Pre is $US100 at Amazon, so a $US30 — or even free — Pixi might not be worth the loss of screen size, speed, Wi-Fi and camera quality. And as BusinessWeek crunches it:

Amortised over the required two-year contract, with the cheapest offering being Sprint’s $US70 a month unlimited data, 450 voice minute Everything Data plan, the Pixi works a out to $US74.15 a month and the Pre to $US76.25. Not much to choose from there in budgetary terms.

And that’s at $US100 and $US150 prices for the Pixi and Pre, respectively — not the new bargain basement rates. What does that leave in the Pixi’s favour? Size? Style? The fact that its name actually sounds like a noun? [EverythingPre]

Makes tossing a phone into a cupholder seem so inelegant, doesn’t it? [EverythingPre via MAKE]

She was shot in a movie, but apparently the creepy Pre girl died Palm’s world, too. This new Pixi ad is full of fun, happy people using the phone while “Sleepyhead” by Passion Pit plays in the background. Huge improvement.

In a way, software written in Ares is the purest kind of web app: It’s designed in a browser, written in web languages and rendered like a webpage. In another, it’s not, because the tools packages these things like native apps. As weirdly hybrid as the results are, Palm reasoning is straightforward: They want to “help Web developers make the leap to becoming mobile developers”. You know, by making web development into app development, even more so that webOS and the Mojo SDK already do. OK!

The tool will be available by the end of the year, Palm says, but it’s not clear what effect it’ll actually have. The hope is that it’ll spur development for a platform that runs the risk of scaring would-be developers away with its limited user base. The fear is that by encouraging the development of nicely wrapped web apps before they have a steady stream of regular apps, Palm is dooming the Pre and Pixi to wallow in a sea of $1 farts and spam. I’m taking bets, in the comments. [PC World]