For 5 years, I have been using Nokia PC Suite to back up my contacts and calendar whenever I would need to format my device, update my firmware, or switch phones. The method ain’t bad since it’s fast, and you have a synchronization with your computer, but the main letdown is that contacts and bookmarks don’t get sync’ed. But for the last months, I have been using another method, that is much more convenient and complete.
Before I delve more and explain to you this method, let me just clarify that I couldn’t care any less about having my contacts and calendar synchronized with my computer. Why? I’m simply not big on PIM stuff.
So now, whenever I need to switch my SIM card to another device, or back up before a format or a software update, I use Phone Switch. Phone Switch (which is called Switch or Transfer on older devices, edit: remind me to dwell later on Nokia’s everlasting name changes) is built into all S60 3rd devices that I have encountered, and it allows you to synchronise two devices together over bluetooth. This involves all messages, contacts, calendar, bookmarks, log, notes, active notes, gallery files, office documents… There are 3 configuration patterns: Sync, Send and Receive, and you can also choose which items to transfer in each mode. Vaibhav from The Symbian Blog has already made a detailed review of this functionality so you can see screenshots of how it works.
For me, it functions so well, it has made switching devices a breeze. When I sold my 3250 and got the N95, I stood for 5 minutes around the phone shop, and waited for Phone Switch to let the magic happen. When it was done, i reset the 3250 to factory settings, handed it to the vendor, took the N95 and was good to go.
Of course in order to use this method for backup instead of a PC (in case like me, you don’t need to sync with the pc), you need to have 2 devices available, but I would go as far as say “buy another cheap S60, it’s worth it” since it saves you all the trouble of losing an important message or all your bookmarks and documents.
Tip: if you have set your Sent Items limit in Messages to more than 20, remember to do so on the other device too or else only 20 messages will be backed up.
