My Windows Phone (previously ''Windows Phone Live'') was a free online companion service for
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...
mobile devices from
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
. The service, released in conjunction with the launch of Windows Phone 7 on October 21, 2010, provides users with a free mobile phone back-up solution by wirelessly synchronizing contacts, calendar appointments, photos, and
OneNote notebooks with a various tightly integrated Windows Live services including Outlook.com People and Calendar, and
Microsoft OneDrive
Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in August 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web vers ...
. Users can access and manage their information stored on their
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...
devices via a password protected online portal using their
Microsoft account
A Microsoft account or MSA (previously known as Microsoft Passport, .NET Passport, and Windows Live ID) is a single sign-on Microsoft user account for Microsoft customers to log in to Microsoft services (like Outlook.com), devices running on on ...
. My Windows Phone also includes the Find My Phone service which facilitates
tracking
Tracking may refer to:
Science and technology Computing
* Tracking, in computer graphics, in match moving (insertion of graphics into footage)
* Tracking, composing music with music tracker software
* Eye tracking, measuring the position of t ...
of a lost or stolen phone over the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
or by messages.
Similar
phone finder services under various names are available for other families of
smartphone
A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...
s. A similar service for
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.
Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
devices was available with Microsoft
My Phone
My Phone was an online service with a companion mobile client application from Microsoft. The service, which launched on October 6, 2009, provided a free mobile phone back-up solution by wirelessly synchronizing contacts, calendar appointments, ...
, withdrawn in 2011.
The service was updated on September 27, 2011 in conjunction with the release of Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" update, adding support for Microsoft Scrapbook and account management features including viewing app purchase history and reinstall apps from the
Windows Phone Store
Windows Phone Store (originally known as Windows Phone Marketplace) was an app store platform, developed by Microsoft corporation for Windows Phone letting users installing various apps on their device. It initially launched with Windows Phone ...
. With the Windows Phone 8 "Apollo" update, Microsoft has increased the age requirement for a separate Microsoft account from 13 to 18 and added the ''My Family'' feature to My Windows Phone, allowing parents to manage their child's accounts (including accounts with a birth date between 13-17 years of age prior to this update) running Windows Phone 8 (which was later incorporated in PCs running Windows 10). In February 2015 Microsoft moved the ''Find My Phone'' feature from the Windows Phone site to the Microsoft account website in preparation for
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
.
Features
My Windows Phone offers the following features:
See also
*
Windows Live
Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were exposed ...
*
My Phone
My Phone was an online service with a companion mobile client application from Microsoft. The service, which launched on October 6, 2009, provided a free mobile phone back-up solution by wirelessly synchronizing contacts, calendar appointments, ...
References
External links
My Windows Phone–
{{Windows Live
Microsoft cloud services
Cloud applications
Windows Phone
Internet properties established in 2010