This is a review of VUFONE, from newACT, a secure backup and synchronization service for your S60 phone on the Internet.
Review Conditions
VUFONE was installed on a Nokia E71, an S60 3rd edition FP1 device.
Installation
VUFONE version 2.03(4) was used for this review. This version can be downloaded from the VUFONE website supports both GPRS/3G and WiFi network access.
First View
There are quite a few applications and services available for free or for a fee, to sync and backup phone contents to the web. As cloud computing becomes pervasive and smartphones are getting ubiquitous, backup and synchronization of mobile data is increasingly becoming an absolute necessity for all Smartphone users. Nokia has its own flavors for sync, Ovi, My Nokia Backup on the web and backup/sync using the PC Suite application. I find that VUFONE offers a very comprehensive set of services for backup and bi-directional synchronization, access and management of almost all mobile phone data to the cloud. Read on.
Main Review
Once you register with VUFONE, using an email and a mobile number, to which all sync/backup/restore will be done the application can be downloaded OTA and installed on the mobile. VUFONE gives each registered user 1000 MB, which is close to 1Gigabyte of mobile data to store. This is more than enough for contacts, messages and Calendar items, and is adequate for posting scaled-down version of images and videos to Flickr or Picasa.
VUFONE supports a whole range of services.
Contacts
The Contacts sync works very effectively. All the contents of each contact, including photos are transferred to the VUFONE site. I have been using Ovi for syncing contacts. But many contacts weren’t synced properly to Ovi. Several contacts were found to be empty. When I restored from Ovi, I lost a lot of information. Fortunately, I had a backup of Contacts with Outlook. In comparison, VUFONE is definitely more reliable. No data was missed when synching with the Internet server. However, it doesn’t store anniversaries as a field. That would be useful.
The Contact plugin for GMail is present on the VUFONE home page and clicking the plugins synchronizes the Contacts Gmail. This sets up a three-way-sync between Google, VUFONE and the Mobile, which makes data doubly secure. VUFONE shows that there were conflicts through the System Info message on the Sync Status box. But I’d have to click the System Info as may times as there are conflicting entries which is painful. I have about 450 contacts and even if there were 100 conflicting entries, I have to click that 100 times. There should be a better way to resolve conflicts. For a start, all the conflicting entries can be listed. And I should have an explicit choice of pushing into GMail or pulling contacts from GMail when there is a conflict.
The GMail sync plugin needs to be polished further. Its definitely worth the wait.
Calendar
Calendar sync works well. There is also a neat plugin for Google Calendar that fetches all calendar events in Google and adds them to the VUFONE calendar on the web. VUFONE also pushes the appointments to the Google Calendar. So a three-way-sync is set up. The next sync pushes all appointments to my mobile phone. This is really great hassle free calendar sync.
Photos, Video, Music and Documents
The VUFONE app on the mobile has the facility to Upload and Download Images, Audio, video and Documents to the web. Since multimedia are of much larger size and do not require periodic sync, you could disable automatic sync of multimedia and just use the Upload facility to push them to the web. This is particularly useful when you have expensive data plans. I switched to WiFi connectivity when I had to upload images, video and music. For videos, images, documents and music, the storage folder on the mobile is configurable. Therefore automatic sync from the mobile will push the files from these default locations. Similarly, files added to VUFONE on the web can be downloaded on to the mobile during a sync or a manual download. There are plugins for Facebook, Flickr and Picasa that will automatically push images to these sites from the mobile and vice versa. On VUFONE web, there is an icon on each image to indicate that it’s also present on the mobile.
Short Messages (SMS)
All messages were synced to my VUFONE home page. Restoration also works fine. Even Ovi.com does not have synchronization of short messages. Nokia backup facility on the PC Suite, backs up SMS, but it is a big mystery. You don’t know what files will be backed up, and from what locations and you cannot view the backed up files. But with VUFONE, I can view all the messages on the web, which is a good thing.
Internet Services
VUFONE’s internet services require special mention, even though I have talked about them in the preceeding sections. The integration with other popular social networking sites like Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, GMail and Google Calendar, make VUFONE a great choice for Smartphone users. This makes VUFONE unique and will have lot of support from customers.
Plugins for IE, Firefox, Outlook
VUFONE also has plugins for Internet Explorer and Firefox using which any picture on the browser can be directly sent to the VUFONE web home page or to the mobile phone. This is really cool. VUFONE uploads the image to its own home page and then syncs the file to your mobile. The plugin worked well for IE and I was able to upload images to both my phone and VUFONE web. But on Firefox, I got the error message “Wrong address configured to the VUFONE server: http://papi.vufone.com/”.
The outlook plugin is used to sync the outlook calendar and contacts directly to VUFONE web and then pick them up on the mobile. If you don’t use any Mail for Exchange or Active Sync, then the Outlook plugin can be used. It actually eliminates the use of Nokia PC Suite for sync of personal data with the mobile.
Maintenance
VUFONE web allows a single-click wipe-out and restoration of data on the mobile phone. But I don’t get to decide what data will be wiped out. Its either all or nothing. VUFONE web also has a backup facility. On the mobile, backup and restore options are also available, which is useful since if inadvertently, we delete contents on the mobile or on the VUFONE home page, data can be restored both ways quite easily.
The VUFONE home page of every registered user, gives a summary of services and a snapshot of the most recent data that has been uploaded to the cloud by the user. The last sync date and time and the contacts / meetings that are still not synchronized with the mobile are also provided. The VUFONE home page is a very comprehensive landing page acts as a portal to the mobile phone.
Handling
I tested VUFONE services with both WiFi and GPRS. WiFi was obviously faster but VUFONE was reliable via both network connections. I didn’t lose any data due to connection issues. I prefer to use WiFi for data intensive synchronization. During the initial registration of the mobile, VUFONE web carries you through a step-by-step process, in sync with the mobile. Any failure on the mobile is immediately detected on the web and you are asked to take corrective action. This is an excellent approach taken for the registration process and I have not seen any other application or service do this so well. The application on the mobile is also simple and easy to use.
Weaknesses
I couldn’t find any major weaknesses. The next step for VUFONE should be to support a feature similar to “Files on Ovi”. That will also be in great demand. The data wipe should provide options to the user to determine what items must be wiped out. There seems to be bugs with Google Contacts sync and Firefox plug ins. Both didn’t work for me, but I am sure they will be fixed in later versions.
Conclusion
After just a couple of days of use, I can say that VUFONE is a solid product and highly reliable. VUFONE not only provides basic services like sync of Contacts and Calendar but goes beyond that by providing sync & backup facility for all multimedia and integration with other social networking sites like Flickr, Picasa, Google and Facebook. VUFONE has shown that it is equal to and in several cases superior to other such services in the market, for e.g. Nokia Ovi. It also supports a whole range of devices and platforms. It is available free for one whole year for those who register before March 1st 2009. VUFONE is a must have and I’ll give it a 5 of 5.
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Besides Vufone, any other OTA backup utility available? $20 for 1GB sounds expensive, many phones come with >8GB storage (internal or memory card) nowadays.
Hi,
You can use Nokia Ovi which is free but has many issues. Zyb and VirtualMobile, Google Sync are all free. s60 apps are available for all these free services. Check them out.
Outlook Track-It (look it up!) is something I’ve been using that you can add to this. My conclusion is that it’s amazing. I needed a plugin for outlook that lets me flag emails for a followup reminder. Outlook Track-It does that, and beyond.
Outlook Track-It is something I’ve been using that you can add to this. My conclusion is that it’s amazing. I needed a plugin for outlook that lets me flag emails for a followup reminder. Outlook Track-It does that, and beyond.
Thank you for these! Do you have anything on Outlook Track-It?