Transferring your contacts, phone book, SMS messages between phones
April 15th, 2010
If you’ve just bought a new phone, you don’t need to copy every single phone number over from your old phone manually. Ken’s Tech Tips explores some of the easier ways to do it.
photo: Robbert van der Steeg
When you change mobile network, you’ll get a new SIM card. Using a PAC code it is very easy to move (or “port” in mobile lingo) your number from your old network onto your new network and new SIM card. However using a PAC code will not help you to transfer things such as any phone numbers or text messages that you want to keep. Those things you’ll have to transfer separately (ideally before you use your PAC code as your old SIM card will get disabled).
When I recently went through the whole process of upgrading my phone and switching network (I moved from my LG Viewty KU990 on O2 to a shiny new HTC Desire on T-Mobile) my network gave me what seemed to be the standard piece of advice: to copy contacts over one by one onto my new phone. Not only would this have been tedious and time-consuming, it also gives a lot of potential for errors to be introduced when inputting the numbers into the new phone – only to be discovered later when you end up calling a complete stranger and you’ve lost your original phone book!
There are two ways to transfer numbers from your old phone to your new phone which will save you a lot of time:
- Transfer via a SIM card
- Transfer via a computer
How do I transfer my phone book and SMS text messages via a SIM card?
photo: Akash k
Phone numbers and SMS text messages can be saved in one of two places: on the phone itself or on a SIM card. The default behaviour is usually to save the phone numbers and text messages on the phone itself, however it may depend on how your phone was set up and configured.
You can use a SIM card to transfer contacts and SMS messages between phones. The exact procedure depends on whether you are using a locked phone or not. The key is to use a SIM card which is acceptable to both phones.
1. If you are moving from an unlocked phone:
- Take your new SIM card and place it into your old phone.
- Turn your old phone on.
- Copy your contacts from the phone memory onto the SIM card memory. Most phones should have this functionality so explore the menus (or documentation) to find it. On the Viewty, this menu item was under “Contact Settings > Copy > Handset to USIM”.
- Copy any SMS text messages you would like to keep from your phone memory to SIM card memory.
- Turn both of your phones off.
- Put your new SIM card back into your new phone. Your contacts and SMS messages should now appear on your new phone.
- Optionally you can now move these phone numbers and text messages onto your phone memory. This may have several benefits such as performance and enable extra features.
2. If you are moving from a locked phone to an unlocked phone:
- Take your old SIM card and place it into your old phone.
- Turn your old phone on.
- Copy your contacts from the phone memory onto the SIM card memory. Most phones should have this functionality so explore the menus (or documentation) to find it. On the Viewty, this menu item was under “Contact Settings > Copy > Handset to USIM”.
- Copy any SMS text messages you would like to keep from your phone memory to SIM card memory.
- Turn both of your phones off.
- Put your old SIM card back into your new phone. Your contacts and SMS messages should now appear on your new phone.
- Move these contacts and messages from the SIM card memory onto the phone memory.
- Turn off both your phones.
- Remove your old SIM card from your new phone. Put your new SIM card back into your new phone.
3. If you are moving from a locked phone to a locked phone (of different networks):
photo: How can I recycle this
This is where things get a little tricky. As both of your phones are locked to different networks, you won’t be able to find a SIM card which is acceptable to both. You could borrow a friends phone to act as an intermediary phone or grab a really cheap unlocked one from Amazon (i.e. follow set of instructions 2 to copy contacts from your old phone onto the unlocked phone, then set of instructions 1 to copy contacts from the unlocked phone onto your new phone). Or try the method below.
How do I transfer my phone book via a computer?
Most phones come with software which allow you to synchronise your phone book with your computer. For example, the Sony Ericsson PC Suite, the LG PC Suite, HTC Sync, etc. You should have received a copy of this software with your phone.
Use the sync software for your old phone to copy the contacts from your old phone into Microsoft Outlook. Then use the sync software for your new phone to copy your contacts from Outlook into your new phone.
You won’t be able to transfer any SMS messages using this method.
Your experiences…
We’d love to hear your experiences migrating to your new phone. Let us know if this worked for you, or if you’ve found a better way.
| About Ken | |
 | My mission is to demystify the world of mobile technology for general audiences and to communicate how mobile technology can enhance every aspect of our daily lives. I've been maintaining the Ken's Tech Tips website since 2004. I have experience communicating mobile technology and presenting new mobile products both online and offline, including at various trade shows and events. You can check out my profile or drop me an e-mail. |
- How Tos & The Basics , Mobile
- Comments(11)
I may be wrong, but aren’t there SIM CARD READERS that can be bought that allow for transfers and backups to be made? These may be able to be used to transfer contacts and/or text messages between phones…
I had to move my contacts recently between a touch diamond and a desire. It wasn’t fun. Simcards are designed to stop a number of strings and a number. Humans want to store contact info. These are different beasts. My friends have longer names than sim cards seem to allow, and they split out the 2 or 3 numbers I have for each person into seperate numbers. Synching doesn’t work because gmail doesn’t seem to understand that people have phone numbers as well as email addresses. I don’t want to wade through a list of email addresses on my desire looking for the symbol which means `phone number`. And although you can hide contact info other than on the phone (ie hide sim, gmail etc), this only seems to work in 1 or 2 places, meaning that other apps which use contacts don’t honour it and again you’re wading through useless data. The only solution is to:
manually stick peoples home, work, mobile numbers onto 1 contact
1) copy data onto sim on old phone
2) put sim in new phone
3) copy sim data onto phone
4) delete all data off sim card
5) delete all synced gmail/sim data
6) ensure anything to do with syncing contacts is disabled
7) spend 30-60 mins manually editing names so that:
Jackson, Ric
becomes
Jackson, Richard
9) manually cut&paste peoples names so surname is in the surname field and first name in first name field (mine was back to front).
I entertained the idea of using some app to do this for me, but quickly decided that finding and learning how to use one would probably take more than the 30 odd mins it would take me to do it myself. I have no idea why phones don’t do this for you – logically it’s very very easy (mobile numbers have a prefix; identical names can be combined etc).
ps. that dumb smiley should be 8 then ) – god save us from the LOL generation…
I am so tired of people who should know better not telling the real truth. I have just attempted to migrate from an N95 8gb to HTC Desire and it is NOT simple. For instance, the Contacts Manager does not have the capability of listing last name first – it doesn’t even have the requisite number of fields. I have confirmed this with HTC themselves. Which means that no matter what you do, the contacts info synched through MS Outlook will not be correctly transferred. I have 670 contacts – not unusual for the “business world” – including notes and addresses, as well as different phone numbers. What regular Phone Directory do you know doesn’t allow you to display or even enter, last name first? I have gone round the world trying to find an Android app that will take over this function, but so far I have found nothing that sounds even remotely adequate. Yet funnilty enough, in all my research, I have not found one single person who has admitted that transferring all one’s contact info to Android Phones is likely to be next to impossible!
Perhaps I am being too harsh. If there is a work around, I would be grateful for the information. Otherwise, I am in for a very long hall doing everything by hand. Oh yes, please don’t mention Google Synch to me either. Since the Contacts Program on Desire doesn’t have the right number of fields, I don’t see how that will work either. And the Sim Card thing is irrelevant. The number of fields available to transfer to the Sim Card is even more limited.
Yours, very frustrated,
Richard.
Just taken delivery of my new HTC Desire and although generally I am very impressed with the phone it does appear to have some very strange bugs that I have never experienced before even with really old basic phones.
Copy contact from SIM to phone.
This appears to be impossible or at least I have not managed to find a way to do this yet, and looking at all the blogs it appears I am not the only one having difficulty with this simple function. As said above this is not something I have ever had difficulty with in the past.
Usually it’s an option in the setup but not so with the Desire.
The contacts I do have are also displayed in a really strange format. Lastname;Firstname/1
Ok Update Update…
It can be done in only 13 steps!
I will post instructions on my website tonight.
thanks it worked for me although i couldnt get my messages saved onto my sim card but anyways goood advice thanks!!
How can I save text messages please from old Samsung with T-mobile to new LG viewty? Any help would be much appreciated./
Yours technopohobically
ros
How do you transfer numbers and text message from an old sim from an old phone to an iphone 4 sim card as they are a different size? Once the new sim is activated will the old sim not work in the old phone?
Hi Dawn,
You make a very good point about that. Which is your old phone? An iPhone 3G S or a non-Apple phone?
Ken
My old phone is a sony ericsson w810 and my new phone is an iphone 4s
Thanks Ken, I've tried loading my software but it is that old it says it will revert my laptop back to windows xp so I didn't bother carrying on because I didn't want to mess my laptop up.