Transferring contacts from an old phone to the iPhone

Question

Getting contacts off your old mobile phone and onto the iPhone may or may not be a straightforward process. If you already have your contacts stored neatly in Outlook (Windows), Address Book (Mac) or a Yahoo!/Gmail Address Book (Mac/Windows), the process is as simple as syncing via iTunes. If all you have is a set of contacts stored on an old Nokia 6300, however, the process is a bit more involved.

Edit: To complicate things I have no budget (so I must rule out paid for Apps)

Edit: I don't live in America, so suggestions in other forums saying "Just take it to AT&T" don't apply to me

Solution 1

There is a iSync plugin for the Nokia 6300, you can find it here. Once you have synced your contact to the Address Book on the Mac you can use iTunes to sync the contacts to your iPhone.

Solution 2

The Nokia 6300 supports SyncML. You can set up Funambol server (temporarily, if you wish) and use it to sync you contacts from the 6300, then use the Funambol client for iPhone to transfer them to the iPhone. You can even use Funambol's free trail service if you don't want to set up the server software.

Solution 3

You could copy your contacts form the 6300 to the SIM card, and then import them on the iPhone.

This of course isn't ideal if your contacts have multiple numbers/addresses, but at least once they're on the iPhone you have more options for cleaning them up. Some options could be syncing to Google Contacts and merging the duplicates; or syncing to Google Contacts or Outlook, exporting to a spreadsheet for cleanup, and then reimporting.

Comments

[Matt 'Trouble' Esse]

My frend just emailed this solution that he 'copy/pasted' from the Web "Manually transfer contacts A terrible prospect for many, transferring contacts by hand to the iPhone is nonetheless effective. Once your contacts are on the iPhone, you can sync them back to Address Book or Outlook easily. " - True but this person has nearly 1000 contacts in a CSV export from the Nokia Connection Manager, and he's deleted the duplicates already!