Move from Nokia to IPhone with style, thanks to Google Mobile Sync

I'm continuing to enjoy my newly unlocked IPhone 3G and tonight I started to snap out of the fascination and set out to sync all my contacts and calendar entries from my (now old and obsolete and dull) Nokia N76 to my IPhone, I had a very simple strategy in mind, sync the Nokia with PCSuite on Vista, and Sync that back to IPhone using ITunes. Unfortunately it wasn't that simple ...

On Vista PCSuite sync's your contacts with Windows Contacts which is stupid and dull and so 1990's, but the real issue for me is that it drops information while syncing, specifically if a contact has more than one mobile number it just syncs the default one, and it does the same with home numbers, a limitation that you simply can't live with because nowadays everyone has a mobile number for business hours, mobile number for evenings, mobile number for weekends, you name it ... and if you care to stay connected you got to keep all those

I thought that this can be a good time to explore the world of OTA (Over The Air) Syncing of mobile data, and I was reasoning that if I managed to do that from my Nokia, there is a big chance that I can Sync back to my IPhone, a simple query on Google lead me to one of their new "Beta" services surprisingly enough named "Google Sync" :)

I started at this page, Google Sync fo Nokia S60 and panicked at the fact that if I would setup Google Sync, I will not be able to sync anymore with PCSuite afterwards without losing data or at least messing it up ... but I can do without that at the moment, after all it hasn't done me much good anyways. To make sure that I'm not loosing any information from my contact list (which is over 800 entries by the way and that makes it worth the effort) I started by doing a one time OTA Nokia-Compatible-Only Backup on OVI free OTA service just to be safe

Here are the steps to setup OTA sync for Contacts, Calendar, Tasks and (Soon) Mail on Google Sync for your S60

Get Google Sync on your phone

1. Backup your data


2. Download mail software


3. Set up Google Sync

First few times I tried to Sync with Google from my S60 I got errors, obvious ones like "Server Error, please try again later", and another more subtle one like "your account doesn't have permission to sync with current settings contact your administrator" ... guess that referred to the server side account, I looked around on my Google Account for something that can be related to Sync permissions but didn't find any. After a short while and some perseverance in re-trying as advised by the first error ... it succeeded. I located some forums and blog entries talking about the Google Sync Exchange server not being stable at the moment

Now for the Easier part Syncing with IPhone, that is an easy one, and doesn't require any software installation or re-tries, here are the steps I followed:

Get Google Sync on your phone

1. Backup your data


2. Set up your iPhone


3. Learn about options and features

While setting this up, I chose to delete all contacts on the IPhone when asked, usually you are asked when you turn ON Contacts Sync, and the same applies for the Calendar, after finishing the configuration just open your IPhone Contacts app and wait for few seconds, Sync will start automatically provided that you enabled "Push" for the Exchange Account you created.

Now I have my personal Contacts and my personal Calendar Sync'd with my personal Gmail account, life should be pink enough, but not for me ... My expectations are now raised and I wanted to do the same with my Business email account, hosted also on Gmail Business mail, but life can't be perfect ...

There is a limitation that you can only setup ONE and only ONE Microsoft Exchange account on your IPhone, so here goes my dream, I reduced my expectations and wanted to overwrite the Exchange account settings for my business email and choose to Sync my business Calendar only, such that I have my personal Contacts (Sync'd once in the begining and left in peace) and my business Calendar (actively syncing) on my IPhone, so I tried to switch off the Contacts Syncing now in order not to delete or mess up my happily stashed 800 contacts, but if you do so IPhone tells you that if you turned it off all contacts on your IPhone would be deleted!! didn't find a way to work around this one yet ... again looks like life indeed can't be perfect

Still at least I have all my Contacts, and active Syncing is really cool, add, edit or delete either on the mobile or on your email account and the changes are reflected to the other side, another neat service from