From Dumb To Smart
It's 2012 and if you are in the market for a new phone, there's a really good chance that you will upgrade to a smartphone. And one of the first hurdles a feature phone user has to cross when upgrading, has to be transferring their existing phone contacts to the new device.
Anyhow, my task today was to help a family member transfer contacts from a SonyEricsson Z550i to a SonyEricsson Xperia Neo V (Android). There should be plenty of methods to do this, but I had a few constraints, namely (1) the phone contacts exist on the phone only (never backed up elsewhere) and are too many to copy all of them to the SIM card, and (2) the phone's USB cable can't be found and didn't come with a memory card (M2).
My hope then fell upon the Z550i's Bluetooth capability and first tried to connect a Windows laptop this way with SonyEricsson's PC Companion software (since it also claims to help transfer data to Android). This didn't work however, as the Z550i is too old and not supported by the program.
Despite the initial setback, the rest of the process is actually pretty simple. If you happen to be in a similar situation, please try the following steps:
1. Pair and connect the Z550i with a PC via Bluetooth.
2. On the Z550i, go to Contacts -> Options -> Advanced and find a function called Send All Contacts and use it to send the contact data to your connected PC. (Sorry if I don't recall the exact menu hierarchy. The Z550i is literally breaking into pieces and I'd hate having to turn it on again to check this.)
3. The PC will receive a .vcf file that consists of all the phone's contacts. Import this vCard file into your Gmail account's contacts. (Gmail Contacts -> Import Contacts…)
4. On the Xperia Neo V, sign in with your Gmail account and sync your contacts!
If you find duplicate entries in Gmail like I did for whatever reason, you can also check out this tip for merging contacts.
That's it, you're ready to say goodbye to your dumbphone and enjoy your new smartphone!