I bought a Sony Ericsson m600i on the cheap a few months ago in Singapore, and I’m really happy with it; it’s probably the best phone I’ve ever used. There’s no camera on it or any of that bollocks, it’s got a full keyboard, full web browser, RSS reader, plays simcity etc, you can get PuTTY for it so you can BASH on the go, big touch screen, it has a pretty decent mp3 player (which I would use if I could be arsed), and it’s nice and small. Only thing is, it doesn’t play very well with OS X…
This is little bit annoying; the phone’s been available for at least 6 months globally, and Apple’s iSync support of Sony Ericsson phones has been pretty
comprehensive to date. I didn’t even check OS X had support for it, and it seems neither did anyone else; there is a monster thread on the apple support forums about it here. Serves us right, eh? It seems support just isn’t possible without a software update from Apple; The m600i uses Symbian OS v9.1 and UIQ v3.0, and a new implementation of SyncML, which iSync hasn’t caught/kept up with.
This is how I’m manually backing up my m600i calendar and contacts with Address Book and iCal at the moment:
- On the phone, go to Contacts.
- Go to ‘more’, then ‘contact manager’, then ‘backup’. It’ll now tell you the last time you backed up your contacts, and tell you that the contacts app won’t be available while it’s being backed up; just press ‘yes’, it’s only going to take about 10 seconds max.
- Now go to Calendar
- Go to ‘more’, then ‘calendar manager’, then ‘backup’. It’ll give you the same message as when you backed up your contacts; hit ‘yes’ again.
- Now, both the backup files you just created should be stored on your m2 card in /other/backup/contacts and /other/backup/agenda.
- Pair up your phone with your mac via bluetooth, and browse the device; navigate to the /other/backup folder on the m2 card, and copy them to your mac.
- Now, go into each folder and double click on the file contained within; it will now copy the contents of each backup file into a new calendar and your contacts. The usual syncing problems will occur, so careful you don’t overwrite your contacts!
This isn’t an ideal solution, because it’s a basic one way backup from your phone to your mac. You could do it the otherway, but I’ve not tried it, and I don’t really need to do it. Being able to back up my contacts and calender is enough for me.
There are plenty of rumours about the 10.4.9 update due to hit soon that adds full support, hopefully that will come soon.