How to copy contacts from Windows phone to Android, without going crazy

Nokia Lumia 635 and HTC Desire 635

Short answer: Setup a Microsoft Outlook account on the windows phone, sync everything to it then export a CSV of all the contacts on a laptop. Login to your Google account on the laptop and import them all. Sync that google account with the Android phone.

My painful experience

My dad has had a Nokia Lumia 635 for a while (over a year). He wanted to upgrade his ageing Nokia and went into Carphone warehouse to get a upgrade. The sales person must have rubbed their hands (I felt they took advantage of my dad saying he wanted a Nokia) and sold him a Nokia Lumia with Windows Phone on it. I was pretty pissed about this because my dad already has a google account, chromebook and my mum has this and a Samsung android phone.

On Boxing day we went back and looked into buying him out of his contract. This was fine and he choose a HTC desire 626 as it had a big screen and didn’t cost anything to his contract. After taking it home, I set it up for him and boy did the fun start.

Some quick things… I’m running Ubuntu on a laptop, my parents have a chromebook, we all have google accounts and we now all have android phones. My parents are not technical and mainly use text and voice. They have broadband with wifi in the house plus a chromecast I bought a few years ago. The Nokia couldn’t connect to any wifi unless it was open with no security/encryption (I tried many ways to get this working but it seems to be a common fault, which requires a total wipe!)

Nokia Lumia 635

I plugged the Nokia into my Ubuntu laptop then copied everything off it I could see. Then copied it to the HTC phone, I also turned off my WPA security on my Nexus 5x phone to allow the Nokia to actually connect to the internet without using my dads low 4g data usage. Then setup his google account which I set to sync everything. When trying to sync contact information with the google account nothing would sync. I had my laptop open with the google account so I could see what was syncing and what wasn’t. I tried forcing the sync and Windows phone kept forcing me to sync with Outlook.com. In the end I setup a temporary outlook account and synced everything with that. I could see things syncing correctly on my laptop screen.

I thought with both accounts on the Windows phone it would now sync but no. So I had to export the lot out of Outlook.com on the laptop as a CSV file then import them into the google account via my laptop. Once syncing, I could setup the google account on the Android phone and everything was good except Gmail automatically creates a group for the imported contacts which I had to delete but keep the contacts.

HTC Desire 820_11

Once that was done, I forced a system update and greeted with the Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) upgrade, meaning my mums new phone and dads phones are very similar making the learning experience a little easier between both my parents.

Ultimately I was quite shocked how difficult a simple thing task was. I mean dataportability should be simple and at one point I was going to give up and get my dad to write out all the contacts to a new his new phone. It wasn’t helped by not having wifi access on the Nokia. I did try Bluetooth and sending contacts as emails but nothing quite worked.

I hope this helps others as I was tearing my hair out to get such a simple thing working. No wonder Nokia has dumped Windows mobile and gone Android.

Windows Mobile finally gets with the programme

I know a lot of people have hated the Windows Phone 7 adverts but I don’t know I kind of like it.

There are times when we (me and my friends) and we do all pull out our phones and twitter, facebook, 4square, etc. It does look a little stupid but hey what can you do? Ideally our phones should be more transparent but right now there still a status symbol. Its part of the reason why I like apps like Locale. A little bit of automation is certainly what I think the mobile is good for, and its consistent with the idea of the mobile as the life remote.

HTC technically make the best smartphones in the world?

HTC Quietly Brilliant

Right from about 10 years ago HTC have been making phones for many phone companies such as Orange in the UK and France. Because of there small eastern background, few people had heard of them and I guess the operators were able to get away with selling quite amazing handsets for pretty cheap. In my history I’ve had…

  • Orange SPV E200
  • Orange SPV M500 (I had a 3G Nec e808 too)
  • Orange SPV M600
  • Orange SPV M700
  • HTC TyTN II (I had a Sanyo S750 inbetween)
  • Orange Touch HD

Anyway, its time again when I can upgrade my phone again (I don’t do 2 year contracts) and honestly looking around the only real choice has got to be a HTC made phone. I know most of you people reading this are in love with Apple but technically I would argue that HTC has had the best smartphones for a few years at least now. Its specially since Android, HTC phones have really started to shine. I’m still shocked at how sweet my current Touch HD is and I’ve not even had a chance to play with the HD2 or Nexus One yet.

And just when you think things can’t get much better for HTC smartphones, rumours of the HD3 are leaked. If the specs are true, I really should hold out for this simply amazing smartphone. Until then I’ll be slowly switching over to Android on my current Touch HD. Others have been check out the same way of running Android but with not as much success as myself it would seem. But you have to give it up to a phone which can run more that one operating system.

The Sexy little HTC Touch Diamond

HTC Touch Diamond

Via Engadget, iI'm not the biggest fan of the touch range of HTC phones, but this one looks great. I would get one if I was upgrading my phone. And you iphone owners have to admit this phone does look great and has a pretty impressive 3d accelerated interface. What makes it great is its spec, VGA screen, Bluetooth 2.0, Wifi, HSDPA/3g support, GPS (a-gps?), 4gig of storage, MicroSD card support for more storage, 3.2mpx camera, 3D graphics chip, FM radio and Accelerometer. It looks like a LG Viewty but runs Windows Mobile 6.1, how much better can you get? Well I guess we'll find out in a special HTC press launch today in London. Best thing about HTC phones, is there usually priced below Nokia's and always available on Orange first.

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Windows Mobile software gets smart

Pocket CM software

I'm going to say something very positive about the Apple iPhone please don't be shocked. Since the iPhone launch, its been amazing to see the quality and attention to user experience windows mobile software has increased. I've been using this windows mobile locker for quite a while now but Nizam pointed me at 2 contact managers icontact and my prefered choice PocketCM. Who needs the HTC Touch when you got applications like PocketCM?

I found a site leading the charge in this area – http://whoneedsaniphone.com/. From the site.

We also want to let everyone know that the intent of this project IS NOT TO DUPLICATE THE IPHONE INTERFACE… we just want to take some of the principles of that interface and bring them to Windows Mobile users! One of the big keys here is operating the phone with just your finger… I have always hated having to pull out the stylus to do certain things… bigger buttons and more scrolling without scroll bars and stuff like that…

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Windows Mobile six

Windows Mobile 6 screenshotWindows Mobile 6 screenshotWindows Mobile 6 screenshot Windows Mobile 6 screenshot using smart filter

It looks like Windows Mobile 6 will go live on Feb 14th. I have to say, it doesn't look much different from Windows Mobile 5. Some of new things include Windows Update, the ability to encrypt storage cards and more input methods. I hope this will be a Flash memory upgrade because it hardly worth adding a version number to it. Also I'm not keen with the Windows Live and Update stuff (although, I do like the idea of my phone being upto date with security patches). Microsoft please remember this is still a phone
and data might be cheap over in the states, there certainly not cheap over here. Mobile review has it covered better that anyone else.

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More thoughts about the iPhone ongoing drama

iphone

So the truth is starting to trickle out. First a note on openness via Kid666.

In The New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms every developer’s worst fears about the iPhone:

‘These [iPhones] are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.’

If Microsoft said that, everyone would jump and down (like they are about Vista) but Apple says it and the follows shake there heads like zombies. As Kidd666 says, nooooooo!

3G also looks like it won't happen says Engadget

It's not unheard of for a firmware upgrade to unlock new features or functionality in a device, but the sources we've spoken to have made it pretty clear that Apple hasn't wedged a UMTS or HSDPA radio into this thing.

A couple of other things. Did Apple steal Visual Voicemail? on top of stealing the maybe dropped trademarked name of iPhone by Cisco. I kinda of agree with Nokia no usable 3G and europe (which is a bigger market and us europeans are use to something small and powerful in our hands? DLTV) will have to wait comments. It is also worth checking out what DL.TV make of us Europeans.

Phones compared in size

And I'm also pretty much done talking about it now. Still very worried about the closed nature of the device but then again the iPod is also a closed type device and you can even run linux on it now. Its also worth pointing out that the Candy Bar touchscreen devices are very much the way forward now.

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