Late Friday, restored the My Phone site, which said the service is "Coming soon." In a posted to several Web sites, the company said that more information about the invite-only beta would be given out at the World Mobile Congress, which opens Feb. 16 in Barcelona, Spain.
is slated to give a keynote speech at the trade show on Feb. 17.
Earlier, Endgadget Mobile reported that the My Phone site was live at the getskybox.com domain. Later, Microsoft acknowledged the screw-up. "Today, Microsoft's My Phone Web site went live prior to its scheduled debut," the company said, several sites reported. Currently, getskybox.com -- a reference to the "SkyBox" code name of the service -- shunted users to the .
According to the information now posted to the site, users of My Phone will be able to back up contacts, calendar appointments, text messages, photos and other information online; share those photos with others; update the information from a computer using a Web-based interface; and use the stored data to restore a phone transfer it to a new device.
Microsoft said it would give each user 200MB of storage space, but warned that only phones powered by Windows Mobile 6 or later would be compatible with the service. In fact, it hedged: "Most phones that run the Windows Mobile 6 operating system are compatible with My Phone service," said the service's site.
Although not strictly billed as a phone-to-PC sync service, My Phone will synchronize Windows Live contacts -- assuming Windows Live has been installed on the phone -- with those on the Windows Live Web site. However, My Phone will not sync contacts, e-mail messages or to-do tasks with an Exchange mail server. Phone data will be backed up to the remote servers automatically once per day, said Microsoft, although users can manually trigger a backup at any time.
My Phone is a potential competitor to Apple Inc.'s , which debuted last July but . MobileMe, however, costs $99 annually, while My Phone will be free, said Microsoft.
MobileMe offers considerably more storage space -- 20GB -- and synchronizes e-mail, contact, and tasks between not only and a PC or Mac, but also between multiple computers.