By Mark Yeong

Living in a safe country, at times I do tend to take this safety for granted and place my personal belongings out in the open. It would be disastrous if my items got lost or stolen, I’ll lose so much which I have gained over the years almost instantaneously. Oh, and I do not mean my weight but the information in my mobile phone.

I’ve lost a mobile phone and I have to tell you that it take a lot of effort to retrieve the lost contacts as I did not have any physical copy to reference to. During that time synchronization was still rather new and I did not do any backups of my contacts. It was only during the period I was using Windows Mobile Devices where backup of contacts seem to be a natural thing with the phone’s software integration with Outlook.

Nokia has introduced the Ovi (I call it Obviously Very Important) Sync service to provide an online solution to let all of us enjoy the convenience of keeping our contacts backed up without much of a hassle. Changing or (touchwood) lost a mobile phone? You can just get another hand set, hook up with Ovi Sync and you’re back in business.

Getting in Sync

For this demonstration I’ll use contacts as the point of reference. Of course, Ovi also synchronizes your calendar events, to-do list and notes.

Step1: Registration

Start by creating an account in Ovi.com here

Congratulations! You’re now a proud owner of an Ovi account.

Step2: Specifying your devices

Select your device from the list provided (most models are supported).

Enter your details such as your mobile phone number, country and time zone.

You’ll be given a summary after all details are filled in.

Once the information is confirmed, instructions will be given for settings to be downloaded to your mobile phone (the Sync app will be used to get information up to Ovi.com)

Step3: Configuring the phone

Accept the configuration, enter the given pin and save the settings

Step4: Doing the sync

Once you’ve saved the settings, head over to your Sync program via Tools

Once you’ve done the sync your contacts will appear in your Ovi.com contacts page

Retrieving your backup

Doing a phone software upgrade, changing your handset (Nokia models) or perhaps you lost your phone (again)? No worries! This time, with an Ovi.com backup you’re more then prepared to get back your information without too much hassle.

Important!

For a start you’ll have to log into Ovi.com, and select restore device. The reason is if you do not do so, it will assume the phone is the primary restore point and send the contacts back to Ovi.com (in this situation it’s empty if you get a new phone)

Once you have select to restore the device, sync up with Ovi.com and it should get the contacts and other important information back to your mobile device.

Well now, with such a service you’ll get peace of mind that a backup of your contacts, calendar and to-do list are on an Ovi.com server.