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[Slacker]

You are late for a meeting and you pull out your Windows powered SmartPhone to call ahead. You flip it open and discover it will not respond. Oh no! you say. Your phone is dead and you had it all set up exactly the way you like it. With a custom home screen, lots of installed applications, and several hundred contacts. The hours of work you invested in building a phone that meets your needs just went down the drain.

Well that is no longer the destiny of your SmartPhone. Say hello to Sprite Backup by Sprite Software.

Sprite Software is already famous for their Sprite Backup product for Pocket PC's. When they started a BETA program for a SmartPhone version I jumped at the chance to participate. So I have been using the product since before it was released. Hopefully my experience and knowledge of the product will help you make the decision on its usefulness to you.

So how does it work? I thought you would never ask! When you install Sprite Backup it installs a SmartPhone portion and a desktop portion. More on the desktop part later. After the install you start up sprite Backup by pressing the PROGRAMS soft key and selecting Sprite Backup.



On the opening screen you can really just press the BACKUP softkey and be on your way. But let's take a look at the options available in the program.



Pressing the MENU softkey gives you a few options. You can select RESTORE, BACKUP OPTIONS or BACKUP ADVANCED OPTIONS.



The options screen will allow you to select what to back up, a naming convention for the backup file, and whether to compress and encrypt the backup file.



The advanced options screen gives you choices to allow Sprite Backup to automatically manage the backup files. So it can restrict the number of backup files kept on the storage card and/or how much space they take up on the card. And you can change the port that Sprite Backup uses to talk to the desktop agent.



So what happens when you click the BACKUP soft key? The software does some initial tasks like closing all running applications, then it creates a single file backup of the entire phone. It stores that file on the MMC or SD card you have put in the phone. It does not back up the storage card itself. Only the phone's information is backed up. The backup process length varies on how much stuff you have on your phone, but shouldn't take more than 2 - 4 minutes. When it finishes the screen tells you it is done. And that's it! It just can not be any easier.

So you now have a backup. Great. But what good is it? Well this is where Sprite Backup shines. Lets assume your phone has crashed, forcing you to do a hard reset. Go to your desktop system and establish a GUEST partnership. Then reinstall Sprite Backup. Take the phone out of the cradle and press the PROGRAMS softkey. Then select Sprite Backup. Once the software is running press the MENU softkey and select RESTORE.



You are given options to select the backup file location (PC or Storage card) and the actual backup file. You can choose to restore the entire phone, or individually select personal or system data. And a very important option is to clean the phone before restore. Basically setting the phone back to hard reset settings. Personally I have had issues when I didn't select the option to clean the phone.



When you kick the restore off the software gives you a warning to turn on Airplane Mode to disable the radio. Do it.

When the restore completes you get a confirmation message. Although not required, it is recommended that you power cycle the phone. When the phone comes back on it will be EXACTLY like it was before it crashed. All your applications still work, contacts are intact, and even that custom home screen is there greeting you.

We all know ANY Windows platform can and will eventually crash. Why not protect yourself from these time consuming problems? For the very reasonable price of $29.95 you can have the peace of mind that I have been enjoying for several months now.

[The Undude]

The Windows Mobile 5.0 version of Sprite Backup software is now available. Check this link for more information about Sprite Backup for Windows Mobile 5.0.

[smeg36]

For all you Treo 700w users out there, Palm is going to be providing Sprite 5.0 free of charge in the near future. So just wait, don't bother buying it yet.

[The Undude]

MTeKK has a review of Sprite Backup for WM5.

Conclusions
"Sprite Software have nicely upgraded Sprite backup to work well on the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform. Their software works without hastle (ActiveSync is the exception here though) and works reliably. Scheduled backups also work without a hitch. My only recommendation to users is to install Sprite Backup on their storage card, and ensure the option to leave a copy on the storage card is checked. Installing to the storage card is not enough alone, and when that option is checked, all files required to run are also installed there."

You can read the full Sprite Backup for WM5 from MTeKK, here.