The public finally gets the opportunity to `test drive' Microsoft's My Phone cloud-based mobile synchronization service, with the company announces the opening of its beta on Tuesday. The open beta of the My Phone service - Microsoft's equivalent of the Apple MobileMe service - is now available for all users with a Windows Mobile 6.0 or 6.1 smartphones.

The My Phone beta was launched by Microsoft at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress in February. However, the distribution of the service was thus far limited. The My Phone Team had mentioned on Monday that Microsoft had freshly upgraded the My Phone Web portal, thereby facilitating the availability of the updated offering to the My Phone software running on Windows Mobile devices.

The currently free service allows the users the over-the-air back up and organization of their contacts, text messages, photos, videos, and calendars. With the service backing up user's data up to a password-protected Web account, the transfer of information from one handset to another - in case of theft or switch over to a new handset - becomes fairly easy.

Microsoft's My Phone service at present provides for up to 200 MB of storage space, on a Microsoft-hosted Web site, for the back up facility on a user's smartphone; and allows the accessibility to the stored information via a Web browser.