We have an older iPhone (8GB, 1st gen, jailbroken) that my girlfriend got from a friend (now on sabbatical, so no tech support). It's running iOS 3, the last version possible on a 1st-gen phone – I think her friend saw her old nokia and took pity on her.
He erased the phone prior to her getting it, and she's spent some considerable time manually adding phone numbers. Now she'd like to back up her addresses and put some music on it so I downloaded and installed iTunes on her PC (XP) but I was concerned that the first sync might remove her addresses.
• She's got no prior installs of iTunes or an iPhone, so nothing to overwrite
• I don't see a way to back up addresses to the SIM, only get them from the SIM
• It's on XP (I use a mac) and so where would addresses sync to?
This should just sync and go, right?
Bonus question:
I don't think she's got anything running her contacts on, and worse – she's only using a Hotmail account. Does the iOS3 allow the phone to sync with any external systems like Gmail?
Thanks!
Best Answer
She shouldn't lose any contacts by syncing with itunes. She might easily end up with duplicates, though, if the same address is in both places. As I understand, every item in the address book is equipped with a UUID. When you delete a record on one device, the UUID is put in a list of deleted records, and so the corresponding record is deleted on other devices during a sync. But that is supposed to be the only way records are deleted from syncing.
Disclaimer: The above is what I have inferred from observation. I haven't seen it in any authoritative documentation, so there is a possibility that it is not entirely accurate. Use this advice at your own risk.