Microsoft aims to help Windows Phone owners safely store their personal data on its servers as part of a future service.
An software engineering job listing picked up by WMPoweruser seeks someone to join its "Windows Phone Backup, Migrate, and Restore team."
"Our goal is to ensure that no matter if someone loses their phone, drops their phone in a lake, buys a new windows phone, or just has their toddler wipe their phone by entering the wrong PIN over and over, a user can quickly and seamlessly get their phone back to a good state," the listing reads.
In the posting Microsoft notes that those aforementioned features are for "the next version of Windows Phone," which puts into question whether the feature will be available for current Windows Phone owners.
As it stands, Microsoft's current back-up solution for its phones is tied to its Zune software, meaning users must go back to their home computer to get a back-up. Competitors like Apple and Google have moved farther away from this, offering cloud-based backup services for their mobile operating systems.
In Google's case, the phone will re-download apps, app data and settings when a user logs in with their Google account on a new phone. Android users are also able to install third-party applications that can make a copy of the their phone and send it to an authorized cloud storage service. For Apple its solution is the recently-introduced iCloud backup, which stores user media, messages, ringtones, apps and app data on Apple's servers, and can re-load that data onto an authorized iOS device.
The job posting offers yet another peek at Microsoft's plans for the Windows Phone platform. A purported leaked roadmap, which made it into the wild yesterday suggests that the next major software release from Redmond is coming in the second half of 2012, and will bring dual-core devices, additional business features and support for higher resolution screens.
