Best way to manage contacts on iPhone?

[GQgeek]

Contact management is positively dreadful on the iphone. I just realized when I lost service the other day that no service also means no contacts if you have syncing turned on. So if your service was gone for whatever reason and you needed to use a hard line, you'd be totally fucked.

First things first, I'm still syncing to my old corporate exchange server. I need to get my contacts off of there, so I guess i'll have them exported for me. I'm not sure what to do with them from there. I think i'm gonna switch to using gmail as my main email account so that I get incoming mail notification, which i can't get with hotmail. The iPhone provides some sort of syncing with gmail, but I don't want to deal with the no service=no contacts thing. What do you guys do for your contacts? Is there a best way to handle them?

 

[GQgeek]

Ok, I downloaded an app called sync in a blink. It was expensive for an iphone app but it was worth it. It enables you to move your exchange contacts to gmail fairly easily.

While you're still connected to exchange, you enter your gmail account info into the app and make sure to check that you're also syncing with exchange server. Perform a sync and it will copy all your exchange contacts to Gmail. Once it's completed you can delete your exchange account from your iphone and your contacts will be blank at this point. You then must reset sync in a blink, otherwise next time you sync you'll lose all the contacts you just created in gmail because it will think you deleted them from your phone. Re-enter your info into the app, sync, and you're done. From now on you can make changes either in gmail directly or on your phone, then to sync you just launch the app and press the button.

At this point, if ever gmail is down you'll still have access to your contacts because they're stored on your phone. Likewise, if you ever lose your phone, you'll have all your contacts properly synced in gmail. Since it does require you to manually sync, you should do it after adding/modifying contacts. It only takes a few seconds. Overall it's a hell of an improvement on built-in contact management.

 

[Jumbie]

Doesn't Google Sync do this for free?

 

[GQgeek]

No. To get google to sync with an iphone you have to setup 2 different accounts. You setup your mail account as a "Gmail" account. Then you setup syncing for your contacts as an "Exchange" account. The regular gmail sync won't sync your contacts. Google provides an exchange front-end to do that part. However, when you sync with exchange server, if the server is offline, you will have no contacts. I found that out when I was reconfiguring a corporate firewall and my phone couldn't connect so I had no contacts in my phone and all my recent calls just showed the numbers.

What this program does is use your regular locally stored iPhone contacts and manually connects to the exchange front-end to sync. That way, all your contacts are stored both on gmail and on your phone. If you lose your phone, they're in gmail. If gmail is down (infrequent but it does happen), you still have access to all your contacts. I think the default behaviour of the iphone to not also store contacts locally when you're syncing with exchange server is pretty damned stupid fwiw. And as I already described, the app makes it possible to transfer your contacts from a corporate exchange server to gmail very easily. I could have done a manual export from outlook and manual import into gmail, but this was easier.

 

[SirWilliam]

Blackberry.

 

[FIHTies]

Originally Posted by SirWilliam

Blackberry.

Blech...A friend of mine showed me that when someone emailed him a telephone number in Gmail for the Blackberry Bold he couldn't dial the number or copy from the menu directly from the email and had to write it down.

Dumb.

 

[tiecollector]

The syncing stuff is still a mystery for me. With iPhone stuff I just assume having a Mac makes life easier. I have my calendars synced on Google and my contacts synced with my Mac.

The Mac MobileMe account that you have to subscribe too seems like the only really convenient option, and I'm not sure how it works with Exchange.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2483 appears to not work very well either

 

[SirWilliam]

Originally Posted by FIHTies

Blech...A friend of mine showed me that when someone emailed him a telephone number in Gmail for the Blackberry Bold he couldn't dial the number or copy from the menu directly from the email and had to write it down.

Dumb.

I think it is just your friend that is dumb...because even my old school blue BB with a scroll wheel could do that.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by tiecollector

The syncing stuff is still a mystery for me. With iPhone stuff I just assume having a Mac makes life easier. I have my calendars synced on Google and my contacts synced with my Mac.

The Mac MobileMe account that you have to subscribe too seems like the only really convenient option, and I'm not sure how it works with Exchange.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2483 appears to not work very well either

Ya, they make you pay like $100 bucks a year for mobileme. No thanks. And the thing is, I am under the impression that any time you sync contacts with a remote server, they are not stored on your phone, which is ******* stupid. Were I not making changes to my corporate firewall I never would have realized the problem until I needed it for something more important that ordering food and a server was down.

Anyway, I'm covered now. The app works great. Since you are just manually syncing with your computer, you don't have to worry about this stuff.

 

[rjakapeanut]

i use google contacts. didn't need multiple accounts either....works seamlessly.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by rjakapeanut

i use google contacts. didn't need multiple accounts either....works seamlessly.

When you set it up did you select exchange server or gmail?

 

[FIHTies]

Originally Posted by SirWilliam

I think it is just your friend that is dumb...because even my old school blue BB with a scroll wheel could do that.
Typical know it all. Because you can do it in one screen doesn't mean that in every appearance of a number that is formatted like a phone number is recognized by the Bold as a dialable phone number. Let's review. It was within an email with Google's Gmail app for the blackberry. There was no 1 before the number, just the area code and then the number. We passed it around the room and noone could do it. But I am sure if you were there you would have been able to work it.

 

[indesertum]

anybody know if there's something like this for android?

i dont want to have to reinput everybody's numbers all over again

 

[javyn]

No problems whatsoever when I was using my Blackberry 8700. Plug it into your computer and sync with Outlook. Easy. If you aren't managing your contacts in Outlook in the first place, you should be.

The more I read about the iPhone, the more it just seems like a thousand dollar toy.

 

[Tarzan]

Since we are on the subject, can someone tell me how do I copy my contacts/phone numbers FROM my iphone to my PC ( itunes or not itunes ) ?