6230i contact problems and queries

Question

I am a new and very inexperienced owner of a Nokia 6230i which replaced my existing 3330. The SIM card was transferred to the new phone so I thought that I would keep all my existing contacts – and indeed for a week ago this was the case. However last evening when I went to make a call about one third of them had disappeared.
Worried but needing them I spent about 30 minutes typing many of them in again and then switched off. However when I switched the phone on again several hours later all the missing ones had reappeared! Leaving me with a number of questions:
1. What is the likely cause of this problem and is it going to recur?
2. I now have a lot of duplicate entries – one in SIM card and one in phone memory. If I delete one which should it be?
3. In general is it better to store contacts in SIM card or phone memory (apart, obviously, for ease of transferring to a new phone)
4. I have installed PCSuite (not without problems but that is another story) and I would like to back up my contacts to a PC before they vanish again. Can I do this even though I don’t use a PIM? Can I back up phone memory and SIM card or only one?
5. Is it true that all the while I have duplicate entries the phone can’t identify the caller?
6. Because I travel all my contact’s numbers start +44 Is it true that in that case the phone can never identify incoming callers – and if so is there a work around?
Questions, questions….

Answer 1

hi jpa.
i have an 8800 handset, amongst others, which supposedly has the same software as the 6230i, or at least very similar.
i will try to answer your queries:
1) i'm afraid i have no idea as to likely possible causes, but if it does reoccur i would suggest that you get the handset looked at by your nearest Nokia Service Centre, details of which are available on this site.
2) that is entirely up to you and depends on your preference.
3) i would say that it is better to store contacts in the phone memory, except in the event that you need to transfer them (when you are unable to do this by other means such as bluetooth or via pc suite).
the reasons for this are that the phone memory in the latest handsets tends to be larger than the sim memory, and the phone memory will allow you to store multiple entries under one contact name whereas the sim will not.
so, you can store a home number, a mobile number, and an email address under one contact name in the phone and regardless of whether the contact calls you from their landline or their mobile the same contact name will display.
on the sim card, however, you will have to store them as two entries (and can't save the email address) perhaps in the manner of "contact x home" & "contact x mobile".
further benefits include being able to use longer names for a contact name in the phone.
i guess it does depend somewhat on how many contacts you have and how likely you are to often swap the sim from one phone to another.
4) you should be able to back-up the entire contents of the phone via pc suite, including the phone memory, the sim card, and even everything on the memory card if you use one.
additionally, you can synchronise your contacts with the windows address book or outlook, so you can view, add, amend and delete contacts on the pc, or simply use this feature as an extra back-up.
5) it is indeed true that you cannot have two contact entries containing the same number and get caller display. this is because the phone can only display one contact for caller display, and it doesn't know which one to choose.
6) apparently that is a "feature" of some handsets, but it is not something that i have encountered personally. +44 and caller display works fine on my 8800 and my 6230, and i have just tried it on my old 8310 and it works ok on that too.
on phones that don't seem to allow it i am not aware of a work-around.
hope that helps. perhaps someone else can suggest a reason for the problem in the first place?