Sunday, July 13, 2008
Migrating your contacts from your old phone to the iPhone 3G
You spent three hours in line in front of an Apple store and you were one of those who made it, and went back with an activated iPhone 3G. Now you are at home and you are looking at your old phone, thinking "how do I move my contacts from this old and ugly phone to my new and shiny iPhone 3G?". If you have to do it by hand, it might take you another three hours... It could work if you have to buy another iPhone 3G for someone in the family: go in line and bring the two phones, migrating your address book one-by-one.Or, you can use Funambol and myFUNAMBOL, which is free and open source. You can do it in five minutes.
Follow these steps:
1. Sign up at myFUNAMBOL with your browser, putting in your old phone. Follow the instructions (it configures your phone over-the-air, nothing to type) and sync your address book to the portal
2. Click on "Change my phone" on the left, change your phone to the iPhone 3G, follow the instruction to install the Funambol app from the App Store, put your credentials in and sync.
Bingo, you are done. No need to waste three hours. And now you have the ability to add Outlook to the mix, if you want to keep your address book in sync over-the-air (e.g. without needing to cradle the device and use iTunes). Yes, you can do the same with MobileMe, but it is very closed and very expensive ($99/year vs. $0/year). And our open source community has built clients for Thunderbird, Mac OS X, to sync your Gmail or Yahoo address book and much more.
Which phone do we support? What if I have:
- a Motorola RAZR or something like that? YES
- a Nokia phone or something like that? YES
- a BlackBerry? YES (use the BB PIM Plug-in from the download tab in myFUNAMBOL)
- a Windows Mobile? YES
- a Sony Ericsson or something like that? YES
- a Google Android phone even if it does not exist yet? YES (it is true, there is a Funambol plug-in for Android... we are just missing the phone to test it on...)
Check the complete list of all the Funambol devices supported, it is quite impressive: thanks to the community we are passing 1,000 different models supported (wow).
BTW, MacWorld put our little iPhone sync app in the top 20 for your iPhone 3G. Can't miss it ;-)
Posted by Fabrizio at 08:52
42 Comments:
Davide Cassenti said...
What to say? Congratulations to M.V. (for privacy :P) and anyone else who worked on the iPhone client! :) It is very nice to see our names everyday in a new place!
Davide Cassenti
Funambol Team
Comment Posted at 10:15
Mordy said...
Hey, Fab, I didn't realize funambol for iPhone was only contacts... Was the jailbroken version like that as well? I seem to recall support for at least email as well...
Could be wrong, but I was recommending Funambol for the last 5 months to an iPhone wielding buddy of mine who wanted to keep his phone synced with outlook. Problem is, he was scared to jailbreak his phone, and waited until now to try it. Now I find out its only contacts, which was severely disspointing since every other client supports calendar, email, and tasks as well as contacts.
Did Apple not allow you to do calendar and mail because of Mobile ME?
Comment Posted at 20:27
Fabrizio said...
Hi Mordy,
yes, the jailbroken version will also do calendar and notes. The one on the App Store can only do contacts, because Apple does not provide an official API to calendar or notes, only contacts... Why they did it, your call ;-)
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 20:37
maffulli.net said...
Hi capo,
there is also SyncEvolution to sync on Mac OS X. I have written two blog entries as brief howtos describing how to use Funambol Mac Plugin and SyncEvolution.
Comment Posted at 23:59
Patrick Ohly said...
Hey Fabrizio, did you forget to mention SyncEvolution (Evolution, Pimlico/Nokia Internet Tablets, and yes, Mac OS X), or do you not consider it part of the Funambol community and therefore didn't mention it?
Are you sure that you want to point users to the Funambol Mac OS X plugin instead of SyncEvolution for Mac OS X? The plugin is a very early development release, only does slow syncs (according to a comment in its source code), and thus isn't ready for production use. SyncEvolution on the other hand has a stable release out and is used successfully by users.
I get the feeling that Funambol is somehow unhappy with SyncEvolution for Macs and therefore encourages a new development instead of improvements to SyncEvolution. I'd love to hear that I got the wrong impression, of course, but if you are unhappy with SyncEvolution, then at least have the decency to tell me what it is. Perhaps I can do something about it.
Comment Posted at 01:11
Palas said...
Nice discussion.Can i use those facilities for Sony Ericson?
Comment Posted at 02:22
Mordy said...
But still no email, even on Jailbroken version?
Comment Posted at 06:39
Fabrizio said...
Hi Patrick,
I am actually using Kevin's Mac OS X plugin on my Mac (and it works ok), that is why I linked that one. I haven't tried the SyncEvolution one and I have no negative comments on it. Actually, I do not understand why we have two and Kevin did not start from that one. I will investigate.
The suggestion I can give you on SyncEvolution is to build GUIs on top. I can't point people to applications that require Unix skills to make them work, my audience is not necessarily technical. They need something that installs and works out of the box.
capo
Comment Posted at 08:34
Fabrizio said...
Hi Palas,
sure, it works with Sony Ericsson too. Just go to my.funambol.com and sign-up to see your phone.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:35
Fabrizio said...
Hi Mordy,
the iPhone has over-the-air email... Why do you think we should support email on it? If it is to add push, no luck, Apple does not allow push with the API.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:36
Patrick Ohly said...
Hi Fabrizio, it seems that the comments in the source code about only supporting slow sync are out-dated. I had asked about that on the developers list when the plugin was announced, but didn't get an answer there.
Regarding the GUI, yes, that would be great to have, and I would have been happy to give Kevin full access to SVN if he had decided to add it to SyncEvolution. I have offered him to join forces and merge the projects, but so far he hasn't replied. We'll see.
Comment Posted at 13:16
Charles Bandes said...
I thought Apple had a whole set of push services built into the API - why not use those to add push support?
Comment Posted at 12:57
Fabrizio said...
Hi Charles,
there is no push support in the API yet. Apple has announced it but not delivered it. They said it will come in September. Be sure we'll add push support as soon as it is available to us.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 13:35
It would be cool if you'd provide the sourcecode of the iPhone sync client. It would for sure be very interesting for other developers, too!
Comment Posted at 15:46
Fabrizio said...
Hi Joel,
I am sure we have it somewhere posted. Let me check.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 15:55
Hi there... thanx for this software which seems very useful..
I do not understant though why , when syncing contacts with iphone 3g, it does not save the emails withing the contacts data...
Comment Posted at 01:55
Any chance of Z-push integration going anywhere? It would neatly sidestep the API limitations, and provide push email too.
Comment Posted at 03:18
Nicola said...
Hi Fabrizio,
I am writing again as I am not sure I managed to post my comment properly before.
First of all, thanks for this application which sounds very useful!
I have notice though it does not sync at all all other information about the contacts: Email, second number, adresses..
This application would be fantastic but without copying all these infos is a bit useful to most of us....
I have an Iphone 3G
Comment Posted at 08:13
Fabrizio said...
Hi Nicola,
can you describe exactly the problem you are seeing, on the Funambol forum?
I believe there is an issue with some fields between phones on the "other" emails, and we are working on it.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:34
Hey fabrizio,
Cannot open The link you gave me..
anyway the issue is quite simple:
It syncs ONLY first numbers - Not emails, addresses, contact pics or second mobiles...
and it is a little annoying as you can imagine..
Comment Posted at 08:42
Fabrizio said...
Hello,
it syncs everything on my device... So we would need to understand more about your particular case. Can you send an email to feedback@funambol.com?
Thanks,
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 08:54
Nicola said...
wrote as you said, but an automated answer told me to write to the forums... ouff...
Comment Posted at 09:02
Fabrizio said...
Oops, I did not know that ;-) This company is growing too fast for me to keep up with the changes...
If you do not want to write to the forums (you should), just send me an email. My email address is easy to guess.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 09:10
Fabrizio said...
Hi Joeles,
I checked and the source code is available in our public CVS on ObjectWeb. You have to check it out from there.
Note that we have a big issue with OW: not all files are visible from the web UI on top of CVS. We notified the issue many times to OW, but for now it is still a problem.
Cheers,
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 12:02
I am suprised there has not been more discussion about the API's lack of calendar and note data access. It seems like this would be much bigger deal to people. I have been holding out on jailbreaking mine because I figured that there would be an app available from the AppStore that could do it. Since now I learn this is not possible, I am going to jailbreak it as soon as a Windows jailbreaking app comes out -- or if I get impatient I'll find a friend who has a Mac and jailbreak it with Pwnage.
Comment Posted at 17:57
Hi Fab
So funambole helps with the contacts. That's great.
Now I want to sync my outlook 2002 calendar.
iTunes does not support outlook 2002 and I don't want to move to outlook 2003or to 2007.
Any hint how to do this?
Comment Posted at 02:54
James said...
Hi Fabrizio,
I have a question for you. I installed Funambol from AppStore on my 1st-gen iPhone running 2.0 jailbroken. I want to backup my contacts and then restore my iphone as a completely new device, and then I want to restore my contacts with funambol. Is this possible?
In other words, after I sync contacts with funambol, I will completely erase my iPhone, after that, how do I get funambol to transfer my contacts back to me??
Please help, any information would be great, thank you!
Comment Posted at 10:01
Fabrizio said...
Hi James,
yes, just sync the device with the server. Once you wipe it out and sync again (with the same user) the contacts will all be restored on the device.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 10:26
Fabrizio said...
Hi Marc,
the official Apple API does not allow calendar sync. For that, you will need the jailbroken version (soon available).
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 10:40
I read somewhere -- don't know if it's true -- that the lack of calendar sync capabilities in the API is only temporary. And that Apple has plans to make the calendar data available in some future version of the API? Does anybody know anything about this? Maybe it's available in the 2.1 API?
Comment Posted at 17:16
Palas said...
Many many thnks Fabrizio.
Comment Posted at 00:54
Hi all,
I would like to take again what Chris was talking about. I'm very interested in this lack of calendar sync capabilities and would like to know if it is temporary or not.
First of all I would expect that funambol as application in the HOT TOP 2 MacWorlapps will get access to these APIs...
Further to this I discovered that there is a SyncML client for events
http://syncml2ical.com/pmwiki.php?n=Main.SyncML2iPhone
Can anyone shade a light on this?
Comment Posted at 08:37
Avi Alkalay said...
So where is the source code for the iPhone plugin ?
I'd like to improve it but can't find the source code anywhere.
Comment Posted at 15:44
Avi Alkalay said...
iPhone client source code is neither in Funambol's SVN browser: https://core.forge.funambol.org/source/browse/core/trunk/funambol/clients/
Comment Posted at 15:48
Fabrizio said...
Hi Avi,
sorry for the delay. The source code should be here: https://apple-clients.forge.funambol.org/svn/apple-clients/branches/comed/apple-clients/ (use guest as username with no password).
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 07:14
I thought this was going to sync my calendar too... :(
I only need syncing for a few things so I'm really not going to pay $100/year for it (MobileMe).
And here I was just thinking I had just bought the better phone. It saddens me to see Nokia and Windows Mobile phones do all kinds of syncing for free.
Do I lose anything if I jailbreak my iPhone 3G? Future updates?
Comment Posted at 18:44
Is iPhone software update 3.0 going to change the situation with the calendar API?
Comment Posted at 06:28
Fabrizio said...
Unfortunately, no. Apple has not provided a calendar API in the iPhone 3.0 SDK. They do not like us and any other developer that needs to add an event in the iPhone (many medical applications, for example). Too bad.
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 07:59
Not even for iPhone 3.0 SDK? Too bad...
However, isn't 3.0 supporting CalDAV (and CardDAV) to synchronize events (and contancts)?
Comment Posted at 23:29
Fabrizio said...
Yes, they have CalDAV support now (calendar only) but you need a CalDAV server. It does not make sense for us to add a CalDAV server in front of our server (yet), mostly because the configuration is a mess (one for contacts, one for email, one for calendar...).
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 03:35
Joel said...
Hi Fabrizio,
Calendar sync is broken on my wife's mobileme (desktop has not been able to successfully sync to the cloud for 6 months - Apple has no solution & offered us 1 year free mobileme).
I need to export her calendar from her iphone. If I jailbreak her phone, can I extract her existing calendar with you application, then restore the iphone back to "unjailbroken"?
Many thanks,
Joel
Comment Posted at 07:21
Fabrizio said...
Nope, unfortunately Apple does not give anyone access to the calendar. However, you might try with Caldav (if you have an iPhone with the 3.0 OS on it) and sync it to a Caldav server (I believe Google has one).
fabrizio
