Nokia is a pain

[elbert]

Now I remember why I dislike Nokias.

Last night I tried transferring my wife's phonebook from a Sony Ericsson T68i to her new Nokia 6230. I was thinking to myself that this shouldn't be too hard, the 6230 has bluetooth anyway.

Well, it's not at all easy. in fact, I still haven't been able to transfer.

To start things off, I paired the Nokia with my PowerBook. No problem pairing, but, as I suspected, the iSync options was grayed out. The 6230 is not listed in Apple's iSync Device Compatibility website, so I shouldn't expect it to work anyway. I tried to Add Device to iSync manually, no success there either. iSync can't 'find' the phone.

Next. I decided to just perform a simple .vcf dump (Send All) directly from the SE phone. At first, I thought it was working because the transfer took a few minutes to complete (Oddly though, after being prompted by the Nokia to 'accept', it doesn't indicate that it's receiving. Only the SE indicates "Sending".). When the transfer was complete, I found that only the first entry was transferred. In other words, that didn't work either.

I decided to try my powerbook once again. From the SE, I 'sent all' via BT. So I now had a file titled "whole phonebook.vcf" in my computer. I then attempted to send this entire file into the Nokia via BT. Again, only the first entry went in.

Third solution: I went for my Palm. I downloaded an old reliable app called FunBook, which can back up and restore phonebooks. It works very well with almost every phone, via IR or BT, every phone, that is, except for the 6230. So, downloading from the SE T68i was a breeze, but the app doesn't recognize the Nokia 6230, no matter what Nokia phone model I selected in the settings. Another failure.

Later, I'll just manually transfer the phone book via the SIM I hope that works. Nakakainis na.

[Edited on 7-16-2004 by elbertc]

[nemcy]

Hope you're ok na sir elbertc... hope nag-down ng init ng ulo dahil sa Nokia.
I am a Nokia user but now that a full-pledge Mac user... I'll be switching to Sony Ericsson phone na rin. Too bad I'm not yet there to avail the Globe promo. Sayang!!! My loss!!!

[Arel]

For those who don't use the high-capacity SIMs, rebuilding the phonebook in your mobile by entering numbers that weren't accommodated by your SIM mano-mano is a tedious & cumbersome task. Had to go that route once when I was still using a Nokia. Kakapagod!

[extremyks]

Hehehe... that happened to me also.. with my wife's phone, the only thing worked was the phonebook to SIM transfer =) That's why I wanna get her to switch to SE already, she now love playing with my z600.

[dude_funk]

Nokia has always had crappy Macintosh support. I've been e-mailing Nokia support about this.

I stay only because I still personally like the navigation (I'm currently using a 7250). I don't even like the alternative Icon based alternative GUI of the 7250i.

But then again, I don't need phone-computer connectivity.

elbertc,
Feature-wise, my dream phone right now would be what your wife bought, the 6230 (and yes, I don't expect any features of the 6230 to work with the Mac)

If you don't mind me asking, how do you load MP3s on the 6230? Is the sound quality good enough for a on-the-go gadget?

[mikaelrules]

Nokia's might not have the send all function, but that doesn't mean that they're bad. The aspects of some Nokia's are way better than SE phones, and vice versa. I'm not partial to any brand, (I've had the P800, P900, 6600, 6230, 3650, etc.) but I do think that the new P910 is disappoining compared to the 9500.

[quicksilver]

sad to say, the only way to avoid manually transferring the numbers to your nokia phone is by using a pc. i just migrated from a 3650 to a 7610 and i just couldn't get my 7610 to sync with my mac. so i had no other recourse but to use my pc.

[elbert]

It's not the absence of the Send All that makes the Nokias bad, it's the inability to 'receive all' that's the problem. These are standard .vcf files that most applications, devices and platforms will accept. I say most because the Nokia just refuses to.

I'm not even looking for Mac support, just for the phone to accept the .vcf file.

Here's what I did. I dumped the .vcf file from my wife's T68i into Address Book. I created two separate contact lists. I dumped the first 250 into my old T610 then copied all the entries into a non working and empty SIM. Then placed that SIM into the 6230 and copied them all into the phone. I repeated the process for the remaining 200+ names.

I thought I was done, but no. Each and every number ended up being classified as General, instead of Mobile. Layers (multiple number entries in one name) were flattened resulting in multiple entries (Elbert1, Elbert2, Elbert3, etc.). Names with over 14 characters were truncated. These are actually caused by the limitations of the SIM card.

Lastly, my Address Book is now screwed up. My wife and I have many common entries and that didn't work well with my list. My fault, I should've backed up first, so I could revert to backup.

I have no PC and I don't care to buy a data cable for a one-time thing. I still hold firmly my opinion that Nokia is a pain... Why couldn't they just allow their phones to accept that stupid .vcf?

[Edited on 7-18-2004 by elbertc]

[ginoledesma]

Give PhoneDirector a try. It supports the Nokia 6230. Its from the makers of PhoneManager.

I gave up my Nokia 6310i (still the best phone I ever had) for some reasons, and now I have an SE T610. I still find the older Nokia's UI much more intuitive and efficient (not to mention fast), but Nokia's had this problem with standards (or lack thereof) -- the early 611x didn't use standard IrDA, Bluetooth in the 6310s (though SyncML-compliant) was "spotty" at best, and so on.

Mac-phone management of the 6310i was horrible. PhoneManager needed an updated firmware of the 6310i (which even Semicon hasn't heard of) so I had to resort to Palm. Phone-to-SIM copy operations? Forget it.

[dude_funk]

Originally posted by elbertc

I'm not even looking for Mac support, just for the phone to accept the .vcf file.

You have a lot more options with Wintel solutions in trying to achieve address book migration. If Nokia had Mac support, all you should've needed (in the least) was infrared-capable Mac and software.

With the 6230's Bluetooth, it should've been better. But, there's still not a shadow of (Nokia-native!) Nokia Suite software for Macs.

(These once-in-a-blue-moon tasks are reserved to our Pentium 166)