How to backup iPhone contacts (no iCloud, iTunes or Outlook)?

Question

I have an iPhone from another age (pre 2008) which is ready to be commissioned as defunct and replaced with a new 4S. My question, is how to back up the contacts form the old iPhone and transfer them to the new one.

The question of backing up iPhone contacts could seem simple at first sight, but in my case it comes with a headache.

I do not use Outlook. I cannot use the iCloud on my old iPhone. I do not use iTunes sync and manage my iPhone manually, so would strongly prefer not to use iTunes at all.

I was thinking placing the contacts on my SIM card, but iPhone only supports getting contacts from SIM and not saving them to SIM.

I was also thinking bluetooth, but learned that bluetooth is only used for iPhone accessories and cannnot be used for iPhone data transfer whatsoever.

Answer 1

You can extract your iPhone contacts and back them up to your computer via CopyTrans Contacts.

Then use the same program to transfer the contacts from your computer to your new iPhone.

Answer 2

Well... back in the day when I had iPhone i used to sync my contacts with Gmail. Here you will find the instructions on how to do it. (Youll need to have iOS version 3.0+)

For detailed information and pictures refer to: http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

1. Open the Settings application on your device's home screen.
2. Open Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Press Add Account....

4. Select Microsoft Exchange. iOS 4.0+ allows multiple Exchange accounts. However, if you're on a device that doesn't let you add a second account, you could also use CalDAV to sync Google Calendar and IMAP to sync Gmail.

5. In the Email field, enter your full Google Account email address. If you use an @googlemail.com address, you may see an "Unable to verify certificate" warning when you proceed to the next step.

6. Leave the Domain field blank.
7. Enter your full Google Account email address as the Username.
8. Enter your Google Account password as the Password.

Notes about passwords: Be sure that you have a strong password for your Google Account. If you see an error message saying "Invalid Password", you may need to unlock your account by solving a short CAPTCHA. Go to https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha. If you are a 2-step verification user, please use an application-specific password instead of your regular password in this field.

9 - Tap Next at the top of your screen.

9a - Choose Cancel if the Unable to Verify Certificate dialog appears.

10 - When the new Server field appears, enter m.google.com.

11 - Press Next at the top of your screen again.

12 - Select the Google services (Mail, Calendar, and Contacts) you want to sync. To receive and respond to meeting requests on your device, both Mail and Calendar need to be turned on, and New events needs to be enabled in your Google Calendar settings.

To enable 'New events', sign in to your Google Calendar using the web browser on your phone or computer. Go to Calendar Settings > Calendars

Click on the Notifications for the calendar you want to sync. Under Email check 'New events' (and any of the other Invitation settings you want enabled e.g. changed events, cancelled events, event responses), and click Save.

1. Unless you want to delete all the existing Contacts and Calendars on your phone, select the Keep on my iPhone (or iPad or iPod touch) option when prompted. This will also allow you to keep syncing with your computer via iTunes.

If you want to sync only the My Contacts group, you must choose to Delete Existing Contacts during the Google Sync install when prompted. If you choose to keep existing contacts, it will sync the contents of the All Contacts group instead. If there are no contacts on your phone, the latter will happen -- the contents of your All Contacts group will be synced.

Answer 3

First of all I'm really interested to know why you don't want to use iCloud, iTunes and even Outlook? Anyways, in your case you will need to use some third party tool and I would recommend iPhone Contacts to Computer Transfer. It is cheap, effective and above all easy to use.

Answer 4

Very Simple! use Disk Aid

I am attaching the link for your reference

Hope this helps :-)

Answer 5

I'm Michael and I work for connex.io, an address book app.

With our service you can easily do this. You just sign-up, connect both of your phones let them sync and you are done. Our trial gives you full service, so you have access to all of the features of connex.io.

We also keep your address books clean, complete, up-to-date and sync the across all of your connected devices and services.

If you want to check it out here. or if I can help you further at michael@connex.io

Answer 6

iOS supports the vCard format natively, so you just need to export your contacts to a vCard format. There are plenty of apps in the store that can do this, My Contacts Backup is free and seems to have good ratings, but just search for vCard in the App Store to have a look at some others.

You can email the vcf file to yourself, and if you open it in Mail.app, it should offer to import all the contacts.

No need for any syncing voodoo. That said, once you get a new iPhone, I've found iCloud has done a good job of dealing with my contacts, on my Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Answer 7

Sync with Exchange maybe? Both iPhones must be synced to the same Exchange account. I think the contacts will transfer then.

Answer 8

I would suggest the same as Michael - sync both devices to a single Exchange account and enable contact sync on both.

Answer 9

I think it is possible to use the iCloud module on your PC (this is the iCloud app for your computer), then connect your old iPhone to your computer and use the iCloud program to backup your iPhone contacts. If you are on a Mac, it is much easier - you can back up your old iPhone contacts directly with the Mac Address Book (no iTunes required).

Answer 10

You need to get your contacts into a supported contact application on your computer. So, make sure whatever application you use has at least one unique entry. This entry can be fake, that doesn't matter, just make sure the contact application is not empty. Then: iTunes>Preferences>Devices...put a check in the box labeled "Prevent iPods/iPhones from syncing automatically". Connect your phone. Remove every check in every box for any & all iTunes content. Make sure the only thing checked is to sync contacts on the Info pane. Hit the apply/sync button. You'll get a popup asking to merge or replace, regarding your contacts, select merge.
• Transfer Contact from iPhone to Computer
• Backup Contact from iPhone to iPhone
Hope it helps.