Contacts from N8

Question

A few days ago a friend who had an N8 called me. He'd bought a brand new Lumia 800 and wanted me to configure his device.
He basicly wanted my to do the following things.
- Send over his contacts either from his N8 or from his PC. The PC contained the 'master' in Outlook together with his calendar. So that was the prefered option.
- he wanted me to make the phone ready to surf the web and fetch emails from his ISP-pop-account over his WIFI-router
- send over some music that he had stored in iTunes.
- if possible set-up some things like he had on his N8 like call-recording (which is impossible on any windows phone)
- and explain a few basic things so he could start using the phone.
After the initial ooh's and aah's wow's about the design of the Lumia 800 and the free included cover, the real work began.
Since this too was my first foray into windows Phone 7.x it was also very new to me too. I must admit that I had been fooling around with a few winphones in the shops. The familiar five-minute strolling around that everybody does but which doesn't really show you what these devices realy can or can not do.
Setting up the email-account went quite well. But from then on things went downhill. I downloaded the ZUNE-software (which the supplied leaflet recommends) and installation went fine. However it came to my attention that the only things you can transfer are music, photos and videos. IMHO transfering music isn't as intiutive as it could but I thought that a small adjustment period might change my view on this. Anyway I managed to transfer music from iTunes to the phone. However my biggest struggle began when I wanted to transfer the contacts and calender from my friends PC to his phone. There's no syncing with the onboard Windows Addressbook nor Windows Live mail nor outlook. Windows Mobile center, which is Microsofts suposedly standard method to sync 'mobile devices' in Windows vista/7, isn't supplied nor works. This is in stark contrast from my past experiences with Windows Mobile or Pocket PC OS. I remember that my HP Jornada 568 came with a CD containing both Activesync and Outlook 2002 which worked like a charm.
I looked on the internet about various means of transfering these contacts and calenders. I made a live/hotmail account, as suggested on some websites, to transfer these things but since there's no 'sync' in the menu-structure nor button to actually start syncing, I gave up using that route. Pressing sync button through the email-account also showed no indication that my agenda and contacts would be syncronised as well. Then I found something about "Outlook connector" which only seems to sync agenda but not contacts. Again since that item isn't very intuitive nor gives any indication that syncing has occurred, I gave up. In the end I had 4 live-accounts in outlook of which I had absolutely no idea whether they had actually synced or not. At one time I managed to get US-holidays on the calender both on the phone and on the web. But since I hadn't a clue as how I did that nor did I want those US-holidays on my flemish calender in the first place, I removed these accounts and manually removed this holiday-calender too. I got so annoyed and angered that allmost smashed this phone into the ground. Completely frustraded I gave up trying to get data from the PC into the phone. This is the worst experience that I ever encountered to transfer a measly 10 contacts from a PC onto the bloody phone. I really didn't want to re-type the contact info manually on the phone nor would that bring the contact pictures from my addressbook to the phone either. I saw that on the hotmail-page I could 'import' a CSV-file made by outlook into the live/hotmail-agenda but that too wouldn't send over the contact-photos either. Plus I doubt that many people even know how to 'export' data into a CSV-file. In fact I did tried that and managed to get the contacts into the web-hotmail-calender but the phone didn't get a thing. Maybe I should have waited a bit longer but this is NOT how I deal with tech. If you want to sent contacts from a PC to a phone then we expect changes to occur immediatly and not within hours or days.
In the end I tried an app called contact-transfer which is supplied on the phone itself. This small app sends over contacts from a bluetooth enabled Nokia phone onto a Nokia Lumia phone. At least I presume this is a Nokia-only app. This finally allowed me to send over my contacts including contact-pictures from my friend's N8 onto his brand new Lumia 800. I have about 590 contacts myself on my own C7-00 and shrudder by the thought of using that 'contact transfer' utility to send my contacts to a another phone. What Nokia hasn't foreseen is that usually ppl trade-in their old phone to get a discount on their new phones. In that case you don't even have your old phone to retrieve your contacts from. I just hate it!
It took me several HOURS of frustration, lots of coffee and associated stress and aggravation. I felt nothing but disgust for that phone. I can't stress enough that I really hate it! The most trivial thing, sending a few contacts, including their contact-photos, from a PC to a phone over a stupid USB cable is NOT possible. And this is from the same company that makes BOTH the phone OS and Outlook PIM on the PC. I **bleep**ing HATE Windows Phone! Since my friend is a retired man, he hasn't got much facebook-contacts (I doubt that many folk in their early 70's have lots of facebook-friends anyway), I didn't bother to setup facebook- or twitter-syncing.
Then he asked me if the phone could record calls. Because he's had several heart surgeries and because of his age he has imperfect speech. So he'd record calls on his former N8 and played these back later to reiterate the conversations. That way he could listen on his own tempo to the request that are sometimes made on the phone (especially when various technical problems occur with whatever consumer-device people have in their houses). I repeated him again that ONLY Symbian devices currently handle call-recording. Which I had repeatedly told him before and which is the prime reason why I stay clear of ANY windows phones myself (since I also use that feature a lot).
I can already say. I WILL NOT BUY A WINDOWS PHONE! No matter what brand. This is pure **bleep**! With an iPhone you CAN sent contacts and agenda to the phone using the supplied (familiar) white USB-cable. Sure, iTunes hasn't got much options on how to do it, but at least it WORKS!!!!
The real sad part is that this **bleep** OS is made by the same folks whom shoved 'Outlook' (that part of Office indeed) through our throats for the last 2 decades. In fact old Pocket PC's came with an CD containing both activesync AND outlook 2002 (BTW which I still use today on my Win XP system). Funny thing is that Activesync used to sync over Wifi in early versions. but this was later removed and limited to bluetooth-only wireless transfer in later versions because Microsoft in their wisdom decided that an encrypted WEB/WPA-wifi-transfer is less secure than an unencrypted bluetooth-transfer, doh! (And these are the guys that Nokia partnered with to make their prime smartphone OS. Oh dear!)
I remember that in Vista that got replaced with Windows Mobile Center. Back then it usually went quite smooth, even over bluetooth. And yet in 2012 their flagship phone OS gives nothing but grief and headaches when you want such a trivial thing as transfering your contacts from your PC to the phone. RIDICULOUS!!!
Alone from my experience with sending over a few contacts from a PC I can NOT recommend ANY Windows Phone. Even iPhones or Androids have much better options to do that. iTunes does it by itself and on Android there's e.g. Phone Explorer (a donation-ware program) that works on both SE-featurephones (like K750i) and Android-phones (I personally tried it with a Samsung Galaxy IIS). And on Symbian there's the familiar Nokia Suite. After my struggle I went home and didn't bother to do much else with the phone. Nor look at the what other apps this device had to offer. I just had enough of Windows Phone for the rest o/t day (and probably my life).
Pure **bleep**, **bleep**, **bleep**, **bleep**!
I don't even care what other Windows crapphone OS devices Nokia ever releases. I don't want them, I don't care about them and I have already had enough of them.
Just release me an N8 with the systemboard of the 701 (or in laymans terms an Nokia 701 with N8's camera) preferably in the N8-case. I'd even settle with the 8GB E:-drive instead o/t 16GB storage space but then I want true 8GB instead of 7GB as in the 701!!! (NOKIA ARE YOU LISTENING! Did you really think we wouldn't notice?)
For the ppl who don't believe me that Nokia is scamming us, I've included screenshots from both the C7-00 which has true 8GB storage space and the 701 which as only 7Gb storage space (the program used is X-plore).
A very unhappy Nolian!
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Answer 1

OK. Here I am AGAIN!
Guess what, that friend with his Lumia 800 called again. He returned it for repair on march 1st. Complained about battery-life and too quiet, having missed way too much calls etc...  Wasn't very happy about it. Wanted to exchange it for an E7, exchange was declined. Finally, got a brand new Lumia 800 yesterday. Allmost 1 month without his 499 euro's phone, no temporary phone in the meantime. He definitly wasn't very happy. I doubt that he'll buy a Nokia again.
Anyway. He called me back to restore his settings (again). Oh BTW, has anybody noticed that there's NO backup/restore facility in Zune? Anyway, one of his complaints was that the ringtones were too quiet and he missed quite some calls because of this. My own ringtone is specifically boosted so that it sounds very loud (My former Acer F1 was also a notably quiet phone). I compared his old N8, my 701 and this Lumia 800 (N8 is definitly the loudest, then the 701 and the most quiet is the Lumia 800). The first problem. Sending my boosted ringtone to his Lumia. First tried over Bluetooth... DOESN'T WORK! Great the easiest way to transfer a bloody 30second ringtone is a no go! It took me to install Zune software, transfer my ringtone over bluetooth from my 701 to his PC, import in Zune, make sure it's LESS then 1MB (converting from WAV to MP3) and put it as Genre: ringtone (this is a tip). Then connect Lumia and transfer the 'ringtone'. If you DON'T use the genre=ringtone your bloody ringtones don't get recognised as such. **bleep**. Oh, did I mention there's no file manager either?
To my surprise my boosted ringtone was deemed acceptable.
So I prepared a ringtone expecially for him. I cropped a piece from a song that he liked and boosted its volume as much as possible. This time it's a lot louder than the supplied ringtones. so...
NOKIA, PLEASE INCREASE THE VOLUME ON THE RINGTONES SUPPLIED WITH THIS PHONE!!!  This is a FREE tip for Nokia/Microsoft! Otherwise ppl will keep complaining that this phone is too quiet. The problem is that we can't do it ourselfs because we can't sent the standard ringtones from the phone to the PC to boost these ourselves. Great!
Then again the hassle with contacts began. SInce I didn't have his old N8-data anymore, I really had to use Live. Luckily I transfered from my previous attempts most of his contacts manually to Live so that I somehow managed to get his contacts synchronised to the phone.
Then tried outlook hotmail connector again. Again, that POS drove me up the wall! That WP7 is really making me MAD! Can't these guys gives us SOME indication whether the bloody things are actually synced ar not synced! Microsoft or Nokia, PUT A BLOODY SYNC-BUTTON on outlook connector!!! So that it's obvious that we're syncing stuff! You've got no bloody idea what the hell is going on! Not on the Phone, Not on Live and not on Outlook! This is useless. With activesync you got an immediate action.  With Nokia suite you get an immediate action. With this WP7 stuff it's, all cloak and dagger!
Again I just can't make ppl understand how much I detest WP7. The simplest things can't be done. Like sending a bloody photo to a PC over bluetooth or a ringtone from one phone to another! This used to be Nokia's forte, sending stuff from one phone to another.
In the end I just gave up. I installed and setup emails on the phone (both Live-hotmail and his POP-accounts), moved some music to the phone. setup the live accounts in agenda and people hub to the best of my knowledge (and in the hope that it actually works which I doubt).
Since I got my N8 and 701 with him (to compare ringtone volumes on these phones as i couldn't believe that the Lumia was soo quiet). I also compared camera. I noticed that the both symbian models had better colour representation. That Lumia's camera is really bad. especially compared to the N8. But for an autofocus camera it's not much better then my 701 with it's EDOF module. I really expected a comprehensive improvement over the C7-00/701. Photos are overexposed, way too red and not very sharp for suposedly Carl Zeis optics.
I can't wait for that 808 pureview to come out. And above all... I really, really hope that this guy doesn't call me much to fix his Lumia whenever it needs fixing. Especially with regards to contacts, calendar and tasks. Thank god, he lives on the 4rd floor so jumping out the window is gonna be a quick and painless if necessary ;-)