Comments on: Comparing Google Sync and MobileMe

By: Matt Radford

Matt Radford — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 09:44:08 +0000

@Nemoi: “Write about what you know”! I haven’t used Ovi, but I’ll have a Nokia 5800 soon, so I may well add it into the mix then. Fair point though – although Google is the Internet’s Big Daddy, Nokia sells millions of devices every year, so Ovi has huge potential to become the de facto sync service.

@Gerry
Google will delete all your on-device contacts at first sync, so my advice would be to upload all contacts to Google first, then the on-device delete is irrelavant in terms of not losing your contacts. However, you will lose any device-specific contact info such as individual ringtones etc.

Also, the “filling your contacts with anyone you’ve ever emailed” problem has been fixed. Check the FAQ for more details.

By: Gerry White

Gerry White — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:06:43 +0000

There is something else which might present a problem – you can only have one Exchange account on an iPhone and I have heard it will delete all your contacts when you do it… I think down the line I am going to have to do some more investigation into how best to backup all my contacts OTA…

Google in the past also used to be a bit of a pest to sync with, as it would sync hundreds of contacts you had only emailed two or three times ..

By: Nemoi

Nemoi — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:59:08 +0000

Why not include Sync on Ovi in this comparision? It also has a different take on syncing, so far without automatic syncs, but for instance with notes and to dos, which I really like…

By: Matt Radford

Matt Radford — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:40:02 +0000

Sorry, I should clarify that. Google does have IMAP IDLE (“Push”) enabled, but it doesn’t work on the iPhone. Only Apple can change this.

Google could enable push email for the iPhone by themselves, through the Exchange implementation that’s powering mobile sync.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:04:03 +0000

Push email? Google does this too, in that GMail is fully IMAP-enabled. On most mobile platforms, you just let your email client received push email from the server. Works really well as long as you don’t lose connectivity and sever the connection.