Let’s just consider for a few moments, what we have stored on our mobile phones. Firstly, almost everyone stores names and numbers on their phone. It makes sense, after all, to keep phone numbers on your phone, so they are with you when you need them. Most phones offer advanced phonebook features, so you can store multiple numbers for one contact, also email addresses, work details, postal address, a company or personal website address, information on how I even know that person and even their birthday!

Many users also take PIM (Personal Information Management) usage further, by utilising their handset’s calendar feature. By using an electronic diary, you can keep up-to-date with all the appointments in your busy schedule, whether you use the phone for personal or business use. Meeting with the MD, contract signing next week with your biggest client, visit to the dentist, Auntie Edna’s birthday, all set into your calendar, all with easy to set early reminders, so you can keep on top of your life and not forget the important dates.

With most mobile phones now sporting cameras, it is so easy to take a snap of the kids having fun at the park, to take pictures at family gatherings, weddings, to take holiday snaps, etc. And you have the benefit of keeping the pictures with you, to show friends, to look through and reminisce and that is just a few of the things we use our phones to store.

So, what happens if you lose your phone? What If your phone is stolen?  And if it goes faulty, and needs to go away for repair? Along with your phone, goes your life, it seems. Even when a handset goes away for a simple repair, very often it will be flashed with the latest handset firmware. So although your fault may be a simple problem with the keypad, when you get the phone back, everything will have been wiped from the memory.

What you should do, to avoid losing it all, is to back up your phone. Let’s take a look at a few of the options available.

Firstly, for your names and numbers, you can back up to the SIM card. Most modern SIM’s offer space to store up to 200 names and numbers. Sounds a lot, but in reality it is very easy to use that up. Think of how many contacts you have stored on your phone that have more than one number, for example you can easily have a work landline, home landline, mobile number, possibly a work mobile too, all for one contact. Just 50 contacts with four numbers each and you will fill the SIM to capacity, because the SIM can only store one number to a name, so each contact number is going to be listed individually,  200 doesn’t seem quite so many now. Any extra information you have stored for that contact, like email address, birthday, postal address, etc, won’t be saved as these cannot be stored on a SIM card, backing up details to a SIM card is definitely an emergency option, and not the best, at that.

If you own a phone that has a memory card expansion slot, you could back up all your details to the memory card. You could back up the full phonebook, calendar, and ensure your pictures are stored to the memory card too. So, if the phone goes faulty, you can at least retrieve your details from the memory card. This isn’t so helpful if you have lost your phone or had it stolen – lost/stolen phone means lost/stolen memory card too!

A third way is to back up to a PC. More useful than the previous two options, you can easily attach most mobile phones to a PC via a data cable or Bluetooth, and use the software that came on the CD with the phone to store all your details from the handset. Not only ideal for saving contacts, pictures and calendar appointments, but also text messages too. And whether your phone is lost or stolen, or gone for a repair, you have a full copy of all your details on your home PC, ready to restore to the new phone. This is the most common way of backing up a mobile phone, but even this is not without its drawbacks. The main problem is the software you use for backing up your phone is manufacturer specific, so you cannot backup details from one manufacturer and transfer them to another, i.e. from Nokia to Sony Ericsson, or vice-versa.

The last option I’ll suggest is probably the best all round option for saving your details and that is to back everything up to an online service. Usually you need to go to the website of the service provider first, to register with a username and password. Then, select the model of phone you use from those listed, and settings will be sent to your phone via SMS, to allow you to synchronise your phone Over The Air, direct to the online service. Once you have the synchronise settings on your phone, all you need to do is select synchronisation, usually phone in the connectivity folder, then highlight the service provider name, and select. And that is it.

All the information you chose to save when registering online is backed up to the online servers, safe and protected, ready for whenever you need it. And, if you lose your phone, if it is stolen, or even if you buy a replacement, all you need to do is get the settings sent to your new handset, and you can download all the information you previously saved. It doesn’t even matter what handset you originally used, and what you have changed to, just select the new handset from the phones listed with your online back-up service provider, and you can download all your saved data.

Very often, pictures can be important for sentimental reasons, as can messages received.

Don’t run the risk of losing it all, back up your mobile phone data today.

The Samsung Pixon is a true imaging monster. Aside from what is nowadays the expected auto-focus, the Pixon supports image stabilisation, has a face detector, smile detector and even a blink detector! With the large 3.2 inch touch screen, all camera features are easily accessible, presented well onscreen via bright icons, and simply selected by pressing on the required icon. If there is one extra included on this camera phone that is a disappointment, it is the inclusion of LED flash instead of a real Xenon flash.

When you take a picture with the Pixon, you can also add geotagging information to the captured image thanks to built in GPS support. Geotagging is an option that is gaining popularity among camera phone users; with this information, it is possible to show the location of where a picture was taken. This info can then be utilised by mapping software, such as Google Maps, allowing people to view your photos and see the location where the photo was taken. At this point, we take a few points away from the Pixon, because the built in GPS can only be used for geotagging. There is no option to utilise the GPS for SatNav operation.

Aside from still image capture, the M8800 has superior video capture options available. Videos can be recorded in Widescreen VGA mode, at 30fps, and also capture video at QVGA resolution, 120fps for slow motion playback. The Pixon supports TV OUT, so all videos and pictures on the phone can also be viewed on a compatible television, by simply plugging in the TV OUT cable.

The Samsung Pixon comes with exceptional media qualities; the music player will play back MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA files, whilst the video player will play back Windows Media videos, MP4 files, Xvid and DivX files. All videos can be viewed in widescreen automatically simply by rotating the phone on its side, thanks to the built in accelerometer.

The menu system found on the handset is the same as that found on the excellent Samsung Tocco. The menu icons are well laid out, bright and colourful, and selection is a simple as touching the screen. An improvement has been made over the Tocco, with regards to data entry. As well as a standard 9 key keypad appearing on screen, offering multi tap and T9 text entry, you can rotate the phone to landscape mode to select a QWERTY keypad and there is also support for handwriting recognition. A stylus is provided with the handset for this, but annoyingly there is no place for it to be stored in the handset, it needs to be attached to the phone via a lanyard. This is disappointing, but the QWERTY text entry and standard keypad are actually quite good, amongst the best available on a touch screen phone, so if like me you don’t like things dangling from your phone, it is not so drastic.

Apart from the standard menu layout the Pixon also has the brilliant Widget menu view also found on the Tocco. With Widget view selected, a row of icons can be found located down the left hand side of the phone screen; simply run your finger down the screen to scroll through the available widgets. Once you have found the widget you are looking for, press, hold, and drag the icon onto the main screen. This way you can keep the screen populated with the applications you want. When you have finished using these applications, simply press, hold, and drag n drop them back onto the widget bar. What I like about this is you can drag the network name from the main screen and drop it into the widget bar, so, if you have a particularly nice picture you are using as wallpaper on the phone, you can move the network name out of the way. The widget bar itself can be hidden by touching the arrow at the bottom.

There are many widgets available, offering shortcuts to the clock, for setting an alarm, to the radio, to the music player or to the internet web browser. When browsing the web, pages can be viewed in landscape mode automatically thanks to the accelerometer feature.

The Samsung Pixon has good connectivity options, as well as support for Quad Band GSM, 3G connectivity is also included, boosted by support for HSDPA Mobile Broadband, supporting speeds up to 7.2 Mbps. The Pixon has a mini USB connector, for connecting to a PC via data cable, and has Bluetooth 2.0, which can also be used for wireless audio streaming. 

There is plenty of memory available, with 200MB on the phone and support for 8GB Micro SD cards, offering plenty of storage space for pictures, videos and a good selection of music.

Overall the Samsung M8800 Pixon is loaded with features. From the excellent high quality camera, through the visually excellent TouchWiz interface, to the many additional options available, the Pixon is currently a handset in high demand.

To people like me, who love the advancements in technology, I am prepared to make the sacrifice. My phone is not small, but packs in all the latest features. However, I am part of the minority. How many times I talk to people and ask them what features they want in their phone and the response is so frequently “I want to make calls, send text messages”. This middle to low end of the market is so well populated by the larger numbers of the phone buying public, it would be silly of manufacturers to ignore them. But there is one more thing the people who buy phones for calls and text use only want, and that is style.

The Sony Ericsson T303 is a small, compact good looking handset, a perfect fit for the hand and pocket.  Measuring in at 83mm long, 47mm wide and a slim 14mm thin, the T303 will slip into a handbag or shirt pocket without making itself noticed. The basics are well covered, the T303 is a breeze to use for composing text messages, the keypad is of a flat, etched design, and despite the phone size they are large and easy to strike. The lithium polymer battery offers up to 400 hours of standby, and an amazing 9 hours talk time.

There is a camera on the phone, but you won’t be printing these pictures out. The handset has a 1.3 megapixel camera, and the snaps are going to be best viewed on the phone, and can be sent to friends via the MMS messaging facility. The screen on the phone supports up to 65,000 colours, and measures in at 128 x 160 pixels, in keeping with the compact dimensions of the handset.

Although the Sony Ericsson T303 offers a media player, with a measly 8MB memory on board you won’t be able to store more than a track or two before that is all used up. Fear not, music lovers, as the T303 includes and FM radio with RDS support, allowing you to keep tuned to the latest hits via your favourite FM radio station.  One feature the T303 does have that revolves around music is the excellent Track ID feature. I have been a big fan of this ever since Sony Ericsson started including it in their mobile phones. I’m sure it’s happened to most of us, we are listening to a track on the radio, and you just need to now the name of the tune. You know it, it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t get it. With Track ID, simply start the program on the phone, place the phone next to the speaker, and a snippet of the song is recorded and loaded up to the internet. It is matched against a database of millions of songs and in next to no time the details of the song are sent to your phone, the name of the song, the artist, the album, and even a link to buy the track online. Simple and easy, the way all good features are.

Connectivity-wise, the T303 is a tri-band GSM handset, with data support for GPRS. There is also support for Bluetooth 2.0, and the SE handset has USB connectivity for connecting to a PC and charging.

All in all, the Sony Ericsson T303 is good at what it does, and has no pretentions to be more than what it offers. The size and styling should appeal to many users, and the colour options of silver and black are ideal for male or female phone users. The T303 would also make an excellent ‘going out’ phone, where you wouldn’t want to be weighed down with your normal phone when out and about on a Friday or Saturday night. This is a budget mobile phone and as you would expect there are some great prices on T303 contract deals and T303 pay as you go handsets.

The first thing you notice about the LG Renoir is the screen. The screen is huge, in mobile terms, clocking a 3 inch TFT, with 200 x 400 pixels and supporting up to 256,000 colours. Holding the LG Renoir in the hand, the phone feels balanced, and measures in at 108mm long, 56mm wide but surprisingly slim at just 14mm.

With such a well featured handset, it is often not easy to know where to start from, but with the Renoir there is one outstanding feature, and that is the 8 megapixel camera. When it comes to camera phones the megapixel count is not the be all and end all when it comes to picture quality. Just as important to this are the lens on the camera, the sensor and processor used and the software that the phone uses. But what 8 megapixels does is allows you to zoom in to the detail of the taken picture, and the quality will be good enough to view on a PC screen, on a web site or blog, and for printing out.

To help with picture quality, the LG Renoir has some excellent features in its camera setup. First, the phone has a Xenon flash, which should offer excellent picture quality even in low light situations. Then there is face detection, an image stabiliser and even blink detection. The camera also supports auto focus, with a manual focus option, and the option to touch the screen where you want the focus to be, too. As the Renoir also comes complete with GPS, pictures can be ‘geo-tagged’. Geo tagging allows you to record the location of where a picture was taken. When the picture is uploaded to one of the many picture hosting sites on the web, this information can be seen by those viewing the pictures. If you are on holiday and take a picture of a nice view, it would be very simple for someone viewing your picture to find the location the shot was taken from, allowing them to maybe visit the place themselves.

As well as a high quality still camera, the Renoir is also equipped with an excellent video recording facility. The LG Renoir can record videos at VGA resolution, up to 30 frames per second. There is also an option for widescreen 640 x 384 video recording and you can also record in high speed QVGA at 120fps. The Renoir supports video playback in Xvid and AVI formats, and playback is smooth and crisp. It is unfortunate that the video player cannot use the Dolby Sound enhancement option, which is for the music player only. The handset has support for a TV OUT connection. With this you can view videos and pictures from the phone directly onto a TV. One way to keep the relatives on their toes at Christmas; you can record in clear crisp detail as Auntie Mable unwraps her gifts, Uncle Joe hits the sherry, the kids start arguing over their presents and Mum throws a fit at Dad for not helping with the dinner! All you need to do is play that back on the TV and embarrass them into silence so you can snooze in front of the TV whilst the Queen’s speech is on.

Away from the camera and video, the LG Renoir is a fully capable, multi connection high end handset. There is quad band GSM support with 3G and HSDPA connectivity to boot. The HSDPA is of the newer high speed 7.2Mbps, and is more than capable for downloading songs and video clips from the internet. Just make sure you have a good data package from your network, and know the limits. To compliment your networks own data offering, there is support for WiFi, 802.11b/g, allowing you to log on to the many hotspots offered in café’s, bars and restaurants, and of course you can also connect the Renoir to your own home network. Connectivity is further boosted with support for Bluetooth 2.0 which allows you to listen to music from the handset with a compatible Bluetooth wireless headset. The GPS connectivity has already been mentioned; together with the aGPS support you can use the handset as a SatNav device.

With all that connectivity available, you can be sure the Renoir is built for web. You can view all your favourite websites on the large 3 inch screen, and using the built in accelerometer everything can be viewed in landscape mode. The handset has a built in Email client, so you can download your emails out and about. Text message entry is via an on screen QWERTY keyboard.

Memory allocation on the handset is a fairly generous 100MB, which is expandable with Micro SD memory cards. The Renoir can easily support up to 8GB, allowing plenty of room for music, videos and photos.

Overall the LG KC910 Renoir is a high end fully featured handset, designed to capture the imagination of a variety of phone users, from the techy-geek down to those who want a quality camera and mobile phone combined. A few 8 megapixel camera’s have been announced recently, as well as the LG we have the Sony Ericsson C905, Samsung i8510 INNOV8 and Samsung M8800 Pixon. It is going to be interesting to see which captures the imagination of the public.

UPDATE 6TH NOVEMBER 08

Sad news from Vodafone HQ today, the Blackberry Storm launch date has changed from the 7th to the 14th November. I was hoping to collect one for myself tomorrow, apparently the decision has been made due to the interest and sheer levels of pre-orders. We also made a call to clarify this and were told by a Vodafone Business advisor that they were in the last week of testing the Blackberry Storm before release on the 14th November, hmmm, whatever the reason, its not available until the 14th and you can continue to pre-order via our site.

After weeks of rumour Vodafone has officially announced the Blackberry Storm (also confusingly known as the 9500, 9530 and Thunder) will be available to order Friday 7th 14th November Vodafone are giving away 20 of these amazing handsets, simply register to receive Blackberry Storm launch updates and news to be entered into their prize draw.

So what is the Blackberry Storm and how does it measure up to previous versions of the Blackberry? Well the most obvious difference is that Blackberry have now joined the touchscreen club, this widely seen as Blackberry manufacturers RIM’s response to the success and popularity of the Apple’s iPhone interface.

The Storm features a 3.25″ high-resolution screen, bursting with over 65,000 colours, including widescreen providing crystal clear clarity. The touch interface is superb and unlike any other touchscreen device on the market, this is a unique interface developed by Blackberry, each touch of the screen feels very similar to using real buttons with a sharp clicking sound, furthermore the double click confirmation of each action will go far to resolve the sensitivity issues raised with other touchscreen devices.

On the usability front the Storm features three different styles of keyboard, SureType predictive, Multi-tap in portrait for quick use, or simply turn the phone sideways and use the on-screen QWERTY keyboard to txt or reply to emails.

So what else does the Blackberry Storm have to tempt the loyal Blackberry Pearl users out there. Memory, 1GB built in expandable to 16GB using a memory card. The 1GB should be sufficient for documents and around 250 tunes, whereas 16GB is plenty for your mobile office and over 4000 tunes.

As you would expect email access is the heartbeat of the Blackberry devices, access your email accounts such as Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft Exchange, Live and Outlook, downloading attachments is a breeze, JPEG, Adobe, Word, Excel and Powerpoint. The Storm also offers live chat across platforms such as MSN Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger and ICQ. 

Superfast 3G Internet, access your favourite websites such as Google, BBC, Facebook, YouTube and Ebay. Built in GPS and Blackberry Maps, locate yourself faster than ever and get directions.

Blackberry have finally improved their camera feature, often criticised as lacking quality in previous models, the Blackberry Storm comes with a 3.2 Megapixel camera with Auto Flash and Digital zoom, not as special as other camera phones but more than adequate and compliments the Storm’s armour of features. You can also capture video, quality is good, photos and videos viewed via Blackberry’s Media Sync player and easy to share with family friends via email or upload to Flickr.

Synchronisation with your PC remains straightforward, sync address book, calendar and tasks, you can also transfer your iTunes music files. Connectivity options include Bluetooth Stereo Audio providing high quality wireless sound, talk or listen to music on the move.

All the above encased in a perfectly formed design, weighing just 155g with the battery. Will this be enough to surpass the iPhones popularity, well its certainly a great attempt and will no doubt get a huge thumbs up from Blackberry’s loyal following. Its won me over, I think the Blackberry Pearl sitting on my desk will be redundant come 7th November.

Compare our Blackberry Storm 9500 Deals as we head into November.

All the above combined with WiFi, the latest A-GPS technology, MP3 Player, FM Radio, Memory Expansion slot all encased in a sleek slider design. Though it has to be said the C905 will stand out for its camera qualities alone which will make it a front runner in the camera phone stakes.

The Sony Ericsson C905 is available in Black, Silver and Inca Gold, and is available to pre-order now, the C905 Cybershot is also available on Pay As You Go.

Mobiles.co.uk best Cybershot C905 deal starts from just £35.00 per month, this includes 600 minutes and unlimited text messages (18 month contract with Orange), the C905 is also available on pre-order from Phones4u at £40.00 per month offering 600 minutes and 500 text messages with a shorter commitment of 12 months via Vodafone.

Compare our Sony Ericsson C905 Deals today and continue to check back as we will be updating all the new C905 deals here first as they are released.

Furthermore the Orange 18 month tariff includes *unlimited text messages, unlimited internet access and 1200 cross network minutes, all this and dont forget the 32″ Sony Bravia for an amazing £45.00 per month.

Compare our Nokia 6300 Deals today, simply select the 32″ Sony Bravia from the search box or choose from the other fantastic mobile phone incentives our partners have to offer.

The Sony Ericsson W980i, available for just £23.75 per month, this is a saving of £75.00 and includes 250 minutes per month, 100 text messages and the handset is free, based on a 12 month contract via Vodafone.

The Samsung I8510, available for just £32.22 per month, this a saving of £140.00 and includes 750 minutes per month, unlimited text messages and free handset, available on an 18 month contract via Orange.

The Nokia 6300 Black, available for an amazing £6.67 per month, save £160.00 on this deal that includes 500 off peak minutes, 50 text messages and free handset, this is available via T-Mobile on a 12 month contract.

Not the handset you are looking for? check out and compare mobile deals via the site