Now that you have an iPhone, how do you make it really work for you? The phone carrier will try to get you “up and running” by transferring the contacts from your old phone into your new iPhone. They will even set it up so that your email is setup on your phone. This could be a good thing, but it’s most likely creating more work for you than it’s worth.
First and foremost, we are a society that likes getting what we want, when we want it, how we want it. When it comes to electronics, this means synchronization of the info residing on them so that we can use it in whatever manner we choose. For example, when it comes to portable music players (PMPs), we want our music on our computers and our PMPs, the playlists in both places, our ratings in both places, etc. Likewise, when it comes to our calendars, address books, and mail, we don’t want to have to duplicate our efforts and/or risk the chance of something not being there when we rely on it (such as an appointment). As such, syncing our devices is very important if you are using the devices to their potential.
If you are lucky enough, you have a MS Exchange server from work or other organization with which you can sync your information. Every smartphone now has the capability of easily setting up syncing with Exchange. Google saw this and ended up licensing the technology so that their Google Contacts and Google Calendar and Gmail could sync with phones just like it was an Exchange server. If you don’t have access to an Exchange server (or don’t want to put your personal info on it) and don’t want to constantly have to sync your device with you computer via a cable, I highly suggest using the Google Sync function.
- Manually Input Contacts into Google Contacts – You will want to manually input the contacts into Google Contacts which are not already in there. I suggest putting all the information that you have for that person in here, including address, all phone numbers, birthdates, anniversaries, etc. Do it once and you will never have to do it again. The format that they use here can be exported into pretty much any program or other system.
- Backup Your Contacts – Now that you have spent so much time putting all the info in there, you should back it up in case something happens during the synchronizing process. It’s really not that big of a concern, but you should have it in case you accidentally delete a contact and you want to retrieve it off a backup. To do this, log in to Gmail, click on the Contacts link on the left side bar, click the button for “More Actions” and then select “Export…” The defaults for exporting All Contacts and using the Google CSV format is fine unless you have a reason to use another format. Once you click the Export button, a file will be created (usually called google.csv) and it will initiate a download for you to open, save, or cancel. Save the file in a location where you can find it if you need it and name it something like “BJacobsGoogle2010-11-07” so you know whose account it was for and when you backed it up. Once it’s saved, you can safely move on to setting up the Exchange sync from the Gmail servers to your phone.
- How to Setup Google Sync for the iPhone – Once you have input all of the contacts into Google Contacts that you want off your phone, it’s time to setup Exchange for Gmail. This allows for your contacts, calendars and email to sync with the Gmail servers. Once this is setup, you can enter in contacts, appointments, etc on your phone and it will sync to the Gmail system and vice versa. If your phone breaks, you will have everything still backed up and it easily loads into your next phone. When it asks whether you want to delete your current contacts, Say yes since you already put everything you wanted into Google Contacts. Once the synchronization is setup, I suggest removing the Gmail account that is setup already using IMAP protocol since you don’t want your phone downloading all your mail twice.
- Choose Which Calendars to Sync – When you log into Gmail, you will see a link on the top of the page that says “Calendar”. When you click on it, a new window opens showing your calendar. You can add events either here or on your phone. If you look on the left side of the screen, you will notice that your calendar is listed and then there are “Other Calendars”. I have already added “US Holidays” for you as well as your “Contacts’ birthdays and events”. When you add the birthday to one of your contacts, it will add it to your calendar as well. In order for the Other Calendars to show up on your phone, just follow the instruction in the link above.
- Essential iPhone Apps – Now that the work is out of the way, here’s a list of some good apps in a bunch of different categories.