Job posting points to automatic backups in Windows Phone’s future

Ah, the classic ‘accidental leak by way of job post’ story. You know and love this genre of post, as they are as durable as they are frequent.

Oftentimes a company looks to hire a person for a very specific role, in hopes of finding the best person for that particular role. However, in doing so, they have to detail what they are working on. And when the project is an unannounced, unreleased feature well, off to the races we go.

That’s the case today. Microsoft has a very intriguing post up that offers a direct look at what is coming down the pike for Windows Phone:

Come join the 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 features we are producing will be new for the next version of Windows Phone and will help ensure Microsoft stays ahead of the competition when it comes to disaster recovery.

If you read that properly, it says this: ‘We are bringing automatic backups to Windows Phone, as our competitors eat our lunch in this department.’ Good on the Windows Phone team for realizing where their holes are.

When might we expect to see this code? Our guess is with Windows Phone 8 (Apollo), which should show its face in June or July, and ship late next year, in time for the holidays. That’s all on this, but we recommend that you take a look at our massive and lovely roundup of Microsoft for 2011.