Zyb – Online mobile data backup

Newly offered Zyb is essentially a free online backup service for mobile phone data. It lets you save the contacts and calendar data from your phone to its web servers so that they are safe even if you lose your phone.

There are, of course, other methods for backing up mobile data. I have a Nokia 6630. I can use Nokia PC Suite to couch my mobile data in the safety of my laptop, home computer or a CD. In case I lose my phone, I can buy a new one and use the backed up data to load it with my contacts etc. But wait – I’m using Nokia PC Suite, right? If my new phone is not a Nokia, I can’t extract anything out of the backed up data – it’s a blackhole for me. Maybe I’ll find a hack to convert .nfb and .nfc files created by Nokia PC Suite to backup my data to something that can be used to update the new phone. Maybe I won’t. In any case, it will be time consuming.

Zyb sounds like a better option in this respect because it supports a wider range of mobile phones.

It synchronizes data using SyncML (Synchronization Markup Language), a platform-independent synchronization standard backed by Open Mobile Alliance. Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Siemens AG have been making their phones compliant with SyncML for quite some time now.

Setting Zyb up on my Nokia 6630 was a breeze. They have done a commendable job at making the setting up process simple and tailormade for specific phone models – at least for 6630, I found very specific instructions.

However, synchronization wasn’t that smooth. I kept getting “Connection failed” error. Curiously, this error would come after 66 or 191 out of 271 contacts have been uploaded. Maybe it’s got something to do with the buffer size used in the transmission. I guess Zyb’s servers have been overloaded with sudden deluge of users right now.

Apart from data backup, Zyb provides some other neat features as well. For example, if your friends (who have a Zyb account) change their phone number or other details, it gets automatically updated in your Zyb database and consequently on your phone the next time you synchronize.

Zyb doesn’t provide a way to integrate with Outlook yet. They say they are going to provide it for a fee in some time. As of now, one can buy an Oulook plug-in here to do the job.

But there are security issues involved in using a service like this. Many users will hesitate uploading private information like contacts and calendar details to a remote server unless they are absolutely convinced about the security of their data. It will be vey important for Zyb to gain that kind of confidence.

Since mobile phones are quickly taking on the responsibilities of a laptop, are more prone to theft and get upgraded more frequently, mobile data backup is becoming important and Zyb seems to be a timely solution.