I'm usually content to leave recommending online backup services to the excellent people at Lifehacker, unless of course I've tried them myself and found them to be useful. Well, last year I upgraded from the Motorola V3 to a Nokia N80, and if you’ve ever tried to negotiate the former's Mobile Phone Tools software then you’ll know how infuriating it is. I had almost resigned myself to tapping in all of my contacts by hand, when I saw ZYB - a free online service that remotely syncs your contacts and then can transfer them to a new handset.

It was ridiculously easy, although a service I didn’t think I’d come back to until I upgraded again. Now, ZYB have shifted their focus to not only saving your contacts list but keeping your SMS messages as well. In addition, users can make some or all of their SMS list public and network contacts and snippets of information between fellow professionals.

I’m sure it’ll be useful to some people - although probably not me, as I don’t make a habit of saving every text message I receive - but if someone wants to try it and report back to SlashGear we’ll be interested to hear how you get on.

ZYB [via Gear Digest - thanks to Sanity for the tip]