Phone and tablet maker HTC is turning off the lights at its HTCSense.com. The year-and-a-half old portal allowed users to backup data from their devices, locate a missing phone, or manage security remotely.
This week HTC announced it would be shutting down the service. Users have until April 30th, 2012 to download contacts, messages, call history or other data in a ZIP file.
For now, HTC recommends customers looking for similar capabilities visit the Google Play Store and find third party backup or location apps.
But eventually HTC plans to roll out “new services” which will replace HTCSense.com. There’s no guarantee that whatever comes next won’t get shut down in a year too… that’s the risk you take when you rely on a free cloud-based service for backup.
In recent months HTC has partnered with Dropbox and other companies to provide customers with online storage and file synchronization features. It’s likely that any new services could also take advantage of third-party offerings… which hopefully means that even if HTC axes its partnerships you’ll still be able to continue using the services.
