One of the biggest fears for a mobile user is losing all of his or her contacts. It is more common that you would think, and can happen for a variety of reasons such as theft, software or hardware upgrades, changing a SIM or a carrier, etc.
Or perhaps you want to take your contacts out of your phone such that you can use them on an Android phone or another smartphone.
And while the iPhone App store has many paid apps that can backup your contacts for you, one of the best and simplest, in my opinion, is “My Contacts Backup”.
This free, ad-supported app can back your contacts up at the click of a button, without having to be physically connected to your computer, and generates a backup file which you can email to yourself. The whole processes is very easy and requires a mere two minutes of your time.
To start off, install My Contacts backup on your iOS device, and open the application. If you wish to change the backup contact format from VCF (VCards) to CSV (Excel) file then go into the “Settings” panel by clicking on the little setting icon found on the bottom-right hand of the screen. You can also wish to choose what type of information you wish to save, such as: Phones, Email, URLs, Addresses, Birthday, Photo, and Notes.
Once done, head back to the main screen and click on the “Export” button. Your contacts will be converted into respective file format. Done. Now, all you need to do is send yourself that email to get them out of your phone. To restore, all you need to do is navigate to that email from your iPhone, iPad or iOS device and click on the “.vcf” backup file and the contacts will automatically be restored.
The paid version of this program (My Contacts Backup Pro) allows users to remove the ad-banners from the app and offers some extra features, although I tested the free app and I believe the ads are no big nuisance and do not slow down the backup process.
The Verdict
There are many third party tools available on the internet which backup your iPhone contacts, but these are mostly paid apps, and most require users to first connect their smartphone and sync it using their computer (a time consuming process that can be quite annoying).
With ‘My Contacts Backup’, however, creating a backup of your contacts is just one touch away, and can be done fro the phone itself, without a physical connection. It is free to use and the ads are not really an issue in this sort of app that you only use intermittently anyway. I would definitely recommend this app if you are looking for a simple way to backup you iPhone contacts.
Get My Contacts Backup (iPhone)
