My Windows Phone (previously ''Windows Phone Live'') was a free online companion service for
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...
mobile devices from
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
. 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 is a file-hosting service operated by Microsoft. First released as SkyDrive in August 2007, it allows registered users to store, share, back-up and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the ...
. Users can access and manage their information stored on their
Windows Phone
Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...
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 personal user (computing), user account for Microsoft customers to Login, log in to consumer Microsoft services (like Ou ...
. 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 ...
of a lost or stolen phone over the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
or by messages.
Similar
phone finder services under various names are available for other families of
smartphone
A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...
s. A similar service for
Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...
devices was available with Microsoft
My Phone, 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. 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. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...
.
Features
My Windows Phone offers the following features:
See also
*
Windows Live
*
My Phone
*
Phone Link
References
External links
My Windows Phone–
{{Windows Live
Microsoft cloud services
Cloud applications
Windows Phone
Internet properties established in 2010