Hi
It is time for my battered Touch Pro 2 to retire. At this moment, for a happy Windows Mobile user the only route to take seems to be Android(Thank you Microsoft for taking all Windows Mobile users for granted and nope I am not keen on your ios clone Windows Phone OS). I have enclosed my analysis of the issues pertaining to migrate to Android from Windows Mobile 6.5. I am big on having all my personal information locally. I am not a big fan of the cloud centric approach. Also I back my data regularly (PIMBackup for Windows mobile is my friend). I know that Android is a Google phone and yes I would like to run Android without a Google id. My mobile phone service provider knows who I am and I purchase a phone or service through them. So my belief is I should be allowed to use my phone directly without signing up with a third party(Google, Microsoft or Apple). I do realize that people who think like me are shrinking but this should hopefully help those still using Windows Mobile and having concerns about sharing your entire life with a third party. Backup all the required content using PIMBackup in Windows mobile and copy the file to your desktop PC. Rename the file to .zip and unzip the contents. The contents inside will be semicolon delimited content (not always fitting a standard) but we can convert them to standard format used by Android.
Contacts:
The contacts are stored as “.csc” file when backed up using PIMBackup for Windows Mobile. This is can easily be converted to .csv by opening the file in Notepad(or Notepad++) and replacing semi-colon with comma. Once you have the CSV there are a few JS conversions done online. I used the one found at http://www.artistec.com/CSV2vCard.html. What I did was save the HTML and run it locally(that way the conversion is done on my PC). Now save this vcard as a “.vcf” file. This file can be copied to your Android phone and contacts can be imported directly. There are a few things to have in mind. If you do not want to synchronize these contacts with your google account, please make sure you have turned off synchronization feature in Android before uploading contacts. The JS conversion HTML can be modified to allow recongnization of Birthdays, Anniversaries etc. I think I did that because I had them stored in my Windows Mobile Contacts. If you already have the contacts synchronized with Microsoft Outlook, then Outlook will directly allow you to export contacts as CSV files saving you a lot of time and effort when working with PIMBackup.
Messages:
By using a software called “PimbackupDroid” (http://pimbackupdroid.sourceforge.net/) convert the messages from Windows Mobile backup (from PIMBackup) into xml format. In the Android side install an app called “SMS Backup and Restore”( http://pimbackupdroid.sourceforge.net/ ). Both the software I think is done by the same developer(not me) and if you guys like his work please contribute as he did an excellent job. Run the software and restore all the messages to your android phone. Some tips from my side. If you want to collate your existing messages in your Android phone, back them up using “SMS Backup and Restore” and merge the XML contents on your PC. Now restore the merged file to get all the messages. Not sure if the software deletes all messages from your Android phone before restore. So it is better to delete all existing messages in your android phone before restore. If you have all the contacts in your address book (or restored from backup as mentioned in the previous step) the messages will automatically be grouped if restored via “SMS Backup and Restore”.
Calendar:
This might be the deal breaker for people who prefer direct transfer of content from PC to the phone without using Gmail calendar. There are not many choices for offline calendar usage in Android. The file for calendar as backed up by PIMBackup seems to follow a non-standard format. So there is no direct conversion for the delimited information. If you are getting your calendar synced via Outlook then you can export the same as CSV. I found a software called “Jorte” to be one of the few software that allow offline calendar on Android system. It allows you to backup the calendar as CSV file as well. The catch here is the format of the CSV as saved by Jorte does not directly match the CSV generated by Outlook. So a conversion would likely need to occur. After spending a lot of frustrating hours, it looks like getting an truly offline Calendar in Android is close to impossible. You cannot even access calendar on Android without having either Google id or Exchange account. My Grandfather's Palm PDA would let him create appointments directly without sending any information to Google. Local user’s do not use Exchange and since the percentage of users who use local calendars(not connected to Exchange) is shrinking day by day, I doubt that we will ever have a solution for this. If someone here has a solution to the calendar problem I am definitely interested.
Shrek
It is time for my battered Touch Pro 2 to retire. At this moment, for a happy Windows Mobile user the only route to take seems to be Android(Thank you Microsoft for taking all Windows Mobile users for granted and nope I am not keen on your ios clone Windows Phone OS). I have enclosed my analysis of the issues pertaining to migrate to Android from Windows Mobile 6.5. I am big on having all my personal information locally. I am not a big fan of the cloud centric approach. Also I back my data regularly (PIMBackup for Windows mobile is my friend). I know that Android is a Google phone and yes I would like to run Android without a Google id. My mobile phone service provider knows who I am and I purchase a phone or service through them. So my belief is I should be allowed to use my phone directly without signing up with a third party(Google, Microsoft or Apple). I do realize that people who think like me are shrinking but this should hopefully help those still using Windows Mobile and having concerns about sharing your entire life with a third party. Backup all the required content using PIMBackup in Windows mobile and copy the file to your desktop PC. Rename the file to .zip and unzip the contents. The contents inside will be semicolon delimited content (not always fitting a standard) but we can convert them to standard format used by Android.
Contacts:
The contacts are stored as “.csc” file when backed up using PIMBackup for Windows Mobile. This is can easily be converted to .csv by opening the file in Notepad(or Notepad++) and replacing semi-colon with comma. Once you have the CSV there are a few JS conversions done online. I used the one found at http://www.artistec.com/CSV2vCard.html. What I did was save the HTML and run it locally(that way the conversion is done on my PC). Now save this vcard as a “.vcf” file. This file can be copied to your Android phone and contacts can be imported directly. There are a few things to have in mind. If you do not want to synchronize these contacts with your google account, please make sure you have turned off synchronization feature in Android before uploading contacts. The JS conversion HTML can be modified to allow recongnization of Birthdays, Anniversaries etc. I think I did that because I had them stored in my Windows Mobile Contacts. If you already have the contacts synchronized with Microsoft Outlook, then Outlook will directly allow you to export contacts as CSV files saving you a lot of time and effort when working with PIMBackup.
Messages:
By using a software called “PimbackupDroid” (http://pimbackupdroid.sourceforge.net/) convert the messages from Windows Mobile backup (from PIMBackup) into xml format. In the Android side install an app called “SMS Backup and Restore”( http://pimbackupdroid.sourceforge.net/ ). Both the software I think is done by the same developer(not me) and if you guys like his work please contribute as he did an excellent job. Run the software and restore all the messages to your android phone. Some tips from my side. If you want to collate your existing messages in your Android phone, back them up using “SMS Backup and Restore” and merge the XML contents on your PC. Now restore the merged file to get all the messages. Not sure if the software deletes all messages from your Android phone before restore. So it is better to delete all existing messages in your android phone before restore. If you have all the contacts in your address book (or restored from backup as mentioned in the previous step) the messages will automatically be grouped if restored via “SMS Backup and Restore”.
Calendar:
This might be the deal breaker for people who prefer direct transfer of content from PC to the phone without using Gmail calendar. There are not many choices for offline calendar usage in Android. The file for calendar as backed up by PIMBackup seems to follow a non-standard format. So there is no direct conversion for the delimited information. If you are getting your calendar synced via Outlook then you can export the same as CSV. I found a software called “Jorte” to be one of the few software that allow offline calendar on Android system. It allows you to backup the calendar as CSV file as well. The catch here is the format of the CSV as saved by Jorte does not directly match the CSV generated by Outlook. So a conversion would likely need to occur. After spending a lot of frustrating hours, it looks like getting an truly offline Calendar in Android is close to impossible. You cannot even access calendar on Android without having either Google id or Exchange account. My Grandfather's Palm PDA would let him create appointments directly without sending any information to Google. Local user’s do not use Exchange and since the percentage of users who use local calendars(not connected to Exchange) is shrinking day by day, I doubt that we will ever have a solution for this. If someone here has a solution to the calendar problem I am definitely interested.
Shrek