OneMediaHub Android Application

OneMediaHub Android Application

You can find quite a few cloud backup services for Android phones out there, but Funambol’s OneMediaHub has a few extra tweaks that make organizing and securing your digital content that much easier.

OneMediaHub isn’t a new app so much as it is a rebranding of a cloud service that has been around for Android and iOS phones. Previously called MyFunambol, the app is sold as a white-label service to carriers and device makers all over the world. Since it is open-source, manufacturers and carriers can tweak its appearance and features to align with their branding. The app is also available as a free download in the Google Play Store, and that is the version this review covers.

Setting up OneMediaHub is a cinch. After you download the app, it asks you to create a OneMediaHub account. Then, it takes you to the OneMediaHub app homepage, where the app will perform its initial sync with your phone’s content. While your phone is syncing, you can sign in to your OneMediaHub account on your PC; from there, you can start syncing your multiple social media accounts to your OneMediaHub account. For instance, you can sync your Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube accounts so that you can send photos from OneMediaHub to them. Also, when you add your Facebook account, your friends' profile photos pop up in your address book.

Syncing my contacts from Gmail was a messy process, as I got duplicate entries for multiple people. For one person, I had three entries with the same Gmail address and email info for each. I’m not sure why the entry duplicated, since I don't have duplicates for that person on my Gmail account. It is easy to delete contact entries via the OneMediaHub website, however, so I was able to clean up my contact list pretty quickly. Still, it was an annoying extra step to take.

If you wish to sync your Outlook contacts, you must first download the Funambol Windows/Outlook sync app from the OneMediaHub portal (you’ll see a 'Download OneMediaHub app for Windows' link). After you download that app to your PC, your Outlook PIM data (contacts, calendars, tasks, and the like) will sync to your cloud account. You can do the same if you have a Mac; just download the OneMediaHub for Mac program, and you’ll be able to sync your Mac Address Book with your account.

One other thing to note is that you can’t back up MMS and SMS messages. Honestly, I don’t really see the need for such a feature, as I tend not to text important information, but some people might find this omission to be a weakness.

A new feature of OneMediaHub is a “timeline view,” which lets you see your media in chronological order. Sort of like the Facebook profile timeline, the OneMediaHub view lists your photos in order of when you took them, and shows your music and videos by when you first acquired them. You can either download this media to your phone or stream it over Wi-Fi or your cellular network.

For organizing and sharing photos and videos, OneMediaHub is a useful, easy-to-navigate application. In my experience, however, contacts were a little more difficult to manage. OneMediaHub is a free service, but it gives you only 150MB of storage. You can upgrade to 5GB of storage for $35 for one year, or to 50GB of storage for $100 for one year.