h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My android new phone is here! But the old one won't put the phone numbers on the sim, or the memory card.

It wants me to sync with google. What does google do with all the phone numbers?

Something.... evil.

Probably.

I've never used the google sync thingy with my android. I use a free thing called MyPhoneExplorer. I don't know if it will help you get your old numbers onto your new phone, but it might help you keep the numbers out of the clutches of Google.

That would be good. I'm just downloading something called contacts2sim so I can delete all the old phone numbers off the sim card, as I don't want them in the new phone, then I'll have a look at that one, thanks.

I just don't want google thinking these people are my friend! and searching the net to add them to my contacts or something. Or anything really. So annoying, as I've spent over a year *not* letting the phone touch the laptop, now it seems I'm being forced to.

I guess this will teach me when customers text me new numbers I should update more than just the phone contacts.

Please don't laugh at me for suggesting this, Mina, but maybe you can add those numbers by hand. Okay, okay, I'll go back to my cave now and eat those mastodon leftovers.

I've got over 200 numbers! Also as I mentioned some of them I don't have backed up, and there's no way to have either phone on without a sim card in it. Who has time to write them all down then put them in manually??

Contacts2sim doesn't like my android version, and Myphoneexplorer is 'waiting for connection' even though it's connected by a cable, which the phone and computer recognises even if the ap doesn't.

Doesn't like wifi connection either.

Just kill me now. This is too difficult.

You have to start USB debugging for myphonee,poorer to work.

Can you connect you old phone as a hardrive, copy the old numbers to a file, and then connect your new phone and copy them over?

okay, this is weird. Put the simcard in the new phone, and an old sim card in the old phone. Fiddling about with set up and a text message comes in. Busy answering it, then realise.... the phone knows who it is. Strange.

All my contacts are in the new phone. So something's happened somewhere.

That USBdebugging thing is what it said, but gave me no idea where to find out how to change it, but it seems something has happened somewhere to make it work.

Why would you want an Android phone and not use the google cloud sync? For me, it is one of the best things about Android that if you lose/break/change your phone you don't need to mess about transferring numbers as it is all done automatically.

I'd just sync. Easy peasy.

FB

I didnt want to give other people's phone numbers to google, they might not like it. It's a business phone, not just my phone.

Oddly enough that's the second time this has been mentioned here today.

I was momentarily agitated when I realised that Google had all my numbers (I probably agreed to it when I wasn't looking). And then I realised it's A Good Thing. Hell...they've got all my e-mails anyway, including *those* ones.

Yes, Google get something out of all this data - it's why they give Android away free. But if I ever want to get up to anything nefarious I can always (as I've leant to say from 'The Wire') burn me a sim. (i.e. get hold of a disposable sim)

>>I didnt want to give other people's phone numbers to google, they might not like it. It's a business phone, not just my phone.

Meh. Google can get their numbers anyway. Searching is what they do.

My big breakthrough was when I twigged that in The Old Days everyone had their numbers and addresses listed in a big book. Every household had a copy of their local one and you could get all of them from the library.

Except for the ex-directory people. I still get calls from people who withhold their numbers, so not everyone is happy about their numbers being common knowledge. Maybe I'm too picky, but I'd rather be like that then too casual and have someone trace a problem back to me. My reputation is all I've got.

Settings - applications- development - USB debugging.

Well fair enough. But it's very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, VERY unlikely that their numbers would be released, still less traced back to you - Google's reputation is even bigger than yours.

(Except that you're probably not complicit in repressing free speech.)

If they have smartphones, chances are that they or their friends will have deliberately or accidentally put their numbers on there already.

Thanks anhaga, but it's been reset now, so all done.


The new phone I think must have synced, or where did the phone nos come from??

Google?

Actually they usually sync automagically over Bluetooth.

(Although that's about *all* they do over Bluetooth. I have never once got mine to transfer a photo.)

It def synced despite saying it didn't because my Google+ profile pics are on the phone.