Microsoft has opened up its mobile phone synchronization and backup service - MyPhone - which was until now in closed beta. Previously codenamed SkyBox, Microsoft's My Phone service was officially showed at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona on Feb. 17. Check out more details about My Phone here.

My Phone service is similar to Apple's MobileMe service that allows backup and mobile synchronization of contacts, photos, videos, and other stuff to secured web accounts on cloud servers.

Microsoft designed My Phone service specifically for Windows Mobile-based devices. Currently, Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 based phones would be able to use My Phone service. And obviously, Windows Mobile 6.5 based phones when out, can make use of the service effectively.

My Phone account offers 200MB storage space for saving Windows Mobile phone content such as Contacts, SMS, Calendar, photos and videos. Also, if Windows Live is installed on phone, My Phone will sync all the Windows Live contacts to Windows Live website. This service auto-syncs user data for backup and restore to password protected account.

In case the user loses phone or buys a new Windows Mobile device, the backed up content can be restored by simple sync. For a detailed preview of My Phone service, check out Neowin's first impressions of My Phone.

My Phone service won't sync contacts, calendar or tasks if the phone is actively connected to Microsoft Exchange server. Also, data stored on the memory card and outside the My Documents folder on phone won't be synced. The silly part is that it won't even sync contacts stored on SIM card.

Microsoft offers My Phone in beta stage there are chances of data loss. Let's hope that My Phone doesn't go through hiccups like how Apple's MobileMe had to. It should be noted that Google also offers a similar service for syncing contacts called Google Contact Sync. Soon, we may have Google jumping into service of offer mobile data backup to cloud servers too.