Review: Dashwire

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Now here is a great tool for backing up all the precious information stored on your phone. Dashwire, as it was previously announced by Tariq, is a tool that will backup contacts, photos, text messages and much more to your own web space that can be viewed online. In addition, you can change some settings, like ring tones, from your web portal and have the change take effect on your phone. You can even text message directly from your web portal. Looks good on paper, but how does it measure up in real life? Let’s take a look…

While setting up Dashwire takes a little bit of work, it is still fairly simple and straightforward. First you will need to go to Dashwire’s Website to create an account and follow their instruction to download a cab file to be installed on your phone. After installing and running the program you will be greeted by the following screen and “Sync my phone option” page. As for Sync option, if you set it to “Automatically,” all information will be updated immediately. On my phone, as soon as I made a call, the Call History was updated. Click directly on “Choose information to sync…” in order customize which specific options you want to sync.

Once you have selected how you want your phone to be synced, you will now get a login screen. Enter the information you received when you signed up online, tap Next through the following screens, and you are good to go.

This is all you have to do on the PDA side of things. Not much to it and perhaps a little boring visually, but now comes the cool part… Your web portal on dashwire.

Go back to the Dashwire webpage and log into your account. Viola! You have all the information you just backed up in an easy to understand GUI view.

This is the heart and soul of Dashwire. As you can see there are many widgets you can utilize here.

Following are some highlights of Dashwire:

• In Photos and Videos, you can view images stored on your device, rotate images, share image out or delete them
• In Ringtones, you can listen to ringtones stored on your device and set them as your default ringtone
• Check Voicemail after creating an account on callwave
• You can view or send text messages
• Add bookmarks to be downloaded to your device on next sync
• Edit contacts or send them text/email messages
• Backup call logs
• Assign Speed Dial to contacts
• In Settings (at the top of the page) you are able to publish your status to Facebook or Twitter

This is quite handy little tool to have on your device if you are on the road a lot and don’t have a chance to sync up to Outlook. Did you ever have to hard reset your device on the road? I have had such instances and I wish Dashwire had been around during those times of need. For road warriors, I would highly recommend this utility as you will never be without those important contact information in times of need.

What I Liked:

• Free
• Ability to restore contact information virtually anywhere
• Ability to update status on Facebook or Twitter
• When sync is set to ‘automatically’ all information is updated instantaneously

What Needs Improvement:

• It appears that Dashwire just looks at the default inbox folder for Messages to be synced. After installing Vito SMSchat, Dashwire was not able to upload text messages
• Does not backup Calendar, Tasks and eMail
• It backs up EVERYTHING on the device, including SD card
  • For users like me, that could mean multiple gigabytes of information!!
• Some devices are not supported
• There are some bugs associated with Ringtones widget

Vital Stats:

Name: Dashwire

Version: Beta

Developer: Dashwire

Tested On: Glofiish X500+ (Windows Mobile 6.0)

Also Available: Windows Mobile 5/6

Price: Free

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