Well, I just got an iPhone, and I gotta say it's one cool gizmo. Time will tell if the sexy creature will hold up or if the network will be sufficient (nobody has good things to say about AT&T's coverage, but so far so good). But it's definitely the most usable phone I've ever beheld, and I think it'll end up making my life easier.
So my old phone (which I detailed here) had to go - Windows Mobile was a complete bitch, and within the past week I couldn't even get buttons to work. The touch screen is a disaster, Windows Mobile takes years to respond to your input, and the battery life was abysmal. While the iPhone didn't have a high bar to clear, I did encounter some frustration: trying to get my contacts off my old phone and onto my new one.
If you're using a Windows PC with iTunes and your iPhone, importing your contacts should be a cinch: just use ActiveSync to bring them into Microsoft Outlook, then import those contacts into iTunes directly. But if you don't have a PC, it's complicated. Early on I tried using Mail2Web's free exchange server to pull stuff off the old phone. That worked well, and I simply installed a "Exchange ActiveSync Profile" on the iPhone to bring in the contacts. Trouble was, these contacts were permanently connected to the exchange account. I didn't want an exchange account on my phone indefinitely, so when I removed the profile, my contacts went with it!
Since I do have a Macbook, I was able to figure out a way to get contacts from the exchange server into Apple's Address Book application. The iPhone works seamlessly with Address Book, so this is definitely the way to go. After much sweat and cursing, here's finally the tried and true way to retrieve those contacts off your Windows Mobile device - without unnecessarily dirtying your fingers with Windows:
- Sign up for a Mail2Web Live account
- Install the Exchange ActiveSync program on your Windows Mobile device - you can download it from the Mail2Web Control Panel under "ActiveSync Settings". Be sure to log into that and not the "Outlook Web Access" site. Check the sidebar for the link.
- Sync the device with your exchange account - this should happen automatically when the package installs, but if not initiate an ActiveSync synchronization manually.
- Open Address Book on your Mac. Select "Preferences", check the box next to "Synchronize with Exchange" and enter the following credentials:
- Username: your Mail2Web user name@mail2web.com
- Password: your Mail2Web password
- Outlook Web Access Server: https://exchange.mail2web.com/exchange/what you put in the username field above
- Open the iSync application on your Mac, enter "Preferences", and select the "Show status in menu bar" checkbox. You'll then see an icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen. Right click it and select "Sync Now".
- Wait for the sync to finish up - you may need to iterate through conflicting contacts to clean them up, but it'll walk you through it.
- Connect your iPhone to your Mac, go into iTunes, select your iPhone on the left-hand sidebar, select the "Info" tab, and check the box that says "Sync Address Book contacts", and click the sync button at the bottom.
- When the sync is finished, check your iPhone to ensure the contacts came through.
Enjoy your iPhone and your freedom from MicroSerfdom!
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