iPhone has addresses - will that first sync remove them?

Question

We have an older iPhone (8GB, 1st gen, jailbroken) that my girlfriend got from a friend (now on sabbatical, so no tech support). It's running iOS 3, the last version possible on a 1st-gen phone - I think he saw her old whale-oil-powered nokia and took pity on her.

He erased the phone prior to her getting it, and she's spent some considerable time manually adding-in phone numbers. Now she'd like to back up her addresses and put some music on it so I downloaded and installed iTunes on her PC (XP) but I was concerned that the first sync might remove her addresses.

• She's got no prior installs of iTunes or an iPhone, so nothing to overwrite • I don't see a way to back up addresses to the SIM, only draw them from the SIM • It's on XP (I use a mac) and so where would addresses sync to?

This should just sync and go, right?

Bonus question: I don't think she's got anything running her contacts on, and worse - she's only using a Hotmail account. Does the v3 OS allow the phone to sync with any external systems like Gmail?

Thanks!

Answer 1

She shouldn't lose any contacts by syncing with itunes. She might easily end up with duplicates, though, if the same address is in both places. As I understand it, every item in the address book is equipped with a hidden UUID. When you delete a record on one device, the UUID is kept in a list of deleted records, and so the corresponding record is deleted on other devices during a sync. But that is supposed to be the only way records are deleted from syncing.

Disclaimer: The above is what I have inferred from observation. I haven't seen it stated in any authoritative documentation, so there is a possibility that it is not entirely accurate. Use this advice at your own risk.

Answer 2

She will loose contacts.

Make sure that before you sync (as soon as you connect your iphone, iTunes will open, but stop it from syncing by unlocking your iPhone by sliding it open), you select the Merge contacts option in the iPhone's Info Tab in iTunes.

I've lost a lot of contact from my iPhone simply because of this reason.

The best option is to download applications like Funambol to backup your iPhone's contacts and data to the Internet. You'll need to create a free Funambol account on the internet first.