Review Conditions
The beta version of Virtual Mobile mobile application was installed on a Nokia E71, an S60 3rd edition FP1 device.
Installation
Installation of the .sisx file is straightforward, using the Nokia Application Installer in the Nokia PC Suite. But a user account has to be created and at least one mobile device has to be registered with the web application at Virtual Mobile user registration site. There is a getting started page that helps you through the process.
First View
Virtual Mobile is another cloud computing application that allows you to sync personal information – SMS, Contacts, Call History, Photos and Calendar to an online database. Since its an early beta version, I expect it to have issues.
Main Review
Web
The web application is neatly organized into two tabs. One tab is to manage your Profile and the other tab is the activity Dashboard.
The Profile page lets you manage your email id, PIN and the devices that will be synced. At registration, the user, in addition to the user name and password, is also asked to enter a 6-digit PIN that is used to authenticate the user who logs in every time. Up to 4 mobiles can be used using one web account.
The Dashboard gives the latest sync activity that was done by the mobile. You get 2 GB of online storage and the total space used / available is also available. The Dashboard is meant to be the starting page on Virtual Mobile on the web.
On the left of the screen, there are two menus, Data Management and Device Management. You can view / edit all the data in the Data Management console. New devices can be added on this console. Added multiple mobiles was a breeze. When you add a new device, a device verification key is sent to the mobile and this must be entered on the web to authenticate the mobile number. During account signup, both the device and login are authenticated only after the device key, sent via an SMS to the mobile is entered during the next login.
Virtual Mobile allows further security – a facility to lock the device for sync and will let you sync only when the unlock password is used. When I tried to set it for my primary device, I got an error.
Device Application
On the device, the VM application needs to be configured with the User Name, Password, Access Point used and data items to be synced. In addition, the device has to be paired with one of the multiple devices added to the VM account. This pairing allows you to manage different sets of data for different mobiles. This is a very nifty and useful feature.
All communications with the mobile is authenticated using certificates. Certificate-based authentication uses a digital certificate to verify an identity. Certificate-based authentication provides another form of credentials, in addition to the user name and password, to prove the identity of the user who is trying to access VM’s online resources. Go Daddy is the Certificate Authority that maintains the certificate repository in the USA. Virtual Mobile’s certificate is based on RSA, which is a very robust public key encryption technology.
To sync your data the first time you need to to to Options/Advanced/Send all phone data to the VM Server. At the first sync for a new mobile, just a sync doesn’t actually do anything!! Subsequently, a sync works. This is not very intuitive.
VM has an option to wipe out data on the mobile – like a hard reset. But I want an option to wipe out all data on the server, just in case. But I guess the philosophy of backup on the web will not justify this operation. There is also an option to restore data to the mobile from VM on the web. While the wipe out option worked fine, VM couldn’t restore all the data to my mobile.
Handling
Virtual Mobile’s web application is very well designed and all information is easily accessible. The clear demarcation of data between multiple devices is managed well.
On the mobile, the application is far from complete. It needs to be more intuitive and user friendly. A plain blank screen welcomes you and there are very few configuration options available.
There is a debug option, which exports logs, but there is no information on where the logs can be found on the device or what the file format is.
Weaknesses & Improvements
The screen real estate on Virtual Mobile application is unutilized. It can show a lot of information. E.g. the user name, number of devices,
First time Sync – need to ‘send all phone data’. Its very likely that a user might not observe this and be frustrated that sync does not happen. Once I ‘send all phone data’ the first time, this option can be disabled for that mobile device. The use of Sync and “Send all phone data” needs to be clarified better to the user.
I found an unexpected error while locking the device to perform device functions (on the web). This is not a weakness and should be ironed out in a few builds.
There must be a log file that shows what records were updated on the mobile and on the server in each sync. This is crucial since it gives a feedback to the user about the status of the sync and is reassuring that data is backed up safely.
I found that the Call Record on the web only display the mobile numbers, even if the mobile numbers are present in the Contacts. This intelligence should be added.
Restoring data on to the mobile didn’t work for me. This is crucial for the application to be considered a true backup option on the cloud.
When I added a second device, the ‘send all phone data’ was stuck on ‘updating call history’ for a long time. It just didn’t progress. And all my call history was already on the web.
After several attempts, I still couldn’t get my Contacts up on the net for my second mobile. So I popped in the old SIM card again in the same device and wanted to check if sync of contacts and call history is successful. But alas, in the Paired Device menu, only second device was shown. The current device wasn’t listed at all! So I think the use cases for multiple devices needs to be worked up and improved by Virtual Mobile. <Update> After a few hours, I check the paired devices menu again and it detected two devices. Eventually I got the phone to upload the photos but I could never get the contacts uploaded to the web and I couldn’t restore the call history to the mobile.
Conclusion
With multiple levels security protection mechanisms, like PIN at login, device verification during registration of devices, certificates for authenticating the mobile before every sync and device lock, VM provides a robust and secure online service for managing personal contact information. I find the mechanism for management of multiple devices good, in theory though many bugs and niggles need to be fixed.
While there is a lot of scope for improvement, these are early days, and I will keep returning to Virtual Mobile for updates. There is a lot of competition out there that’s much better. VM needs to quickly fix the issues to be in the reckoning. I don’t want to hand out a verdict yet because its a very early beta. Lets wait for the final version. Its available here for download.
