Fiddling with Android does your brain in

A KEY FEATURE to the G1 Android handset is that it syncs itself with your Google account – especially for the handsets contacts/addressbook. Don't spend half a day trying to import from Nokia's PC Suite. It won't work. Use the SIM importer facility instead.

There's plenty of information available on how to import addressbook entries into Google's Gmail from an Apple Ithingey or Mac. But the reality is that many potential G1 phone users will be migrating from a Nokia.

Managing a Nokia's addressbook can be done using the Nokia PC Suite software. Plus PC Suite can sync itself with Microsoft Outlook's addressbook. So you can have all your mobile phone numbers and email addresses in one place.

A word of advice. Don't do this because you could end up like the INQ with 1199 contacts in your Nokia's handset. (The handset reported that there was still plenty of room for more).

The phone becomes unusable since with 1199 entries it takes ages to find the telephone number you want. Restoring to the original phonebook produced a much more manageable 349 contacts.

The conversion process should have been simple. Just select all the address entries in Nokia PC Suite; save the results as a .csv (database) file and import the file into Gmail.

It works but there's obviously a clash in the way Nokia stores information in Vcard (vcf) format. All the phone numbers went into the Gmail addressbook in the 'notes' field. Not the 'mobile phone' field. Disaster.

The INQ considered using a Vcard editor such as Vcard Organizer v1.2 by Stefano Toniolo but it isn't freeware as advertised. You can make changes with a standard text editor like Notepad, anyway.

So, after hours of messing about, the INQ suddenly discovered that the G1 can import numbers from the SIM card. The snag here is that you're usually limited in the number the card will take. The latest SIMs take 200 numbers while older SIMs were only 100.

The INQ was also going to attempt to import email addresses from Hotmail into Gmail. The very latest version of Hotmail swears it can export to a csv file but when the INQ tried it, the system reported a network error.

There's a long-winded way and details are provided here but here but by this time the INQ had lost heart.

Incidentally, for Cupertino fan boys the way to export from an Ithingey is here. Or for Mac bods try here.

Finally, to answer an INQ reader's question – it is actually possible to get the inbuilt Microsoft Messenger client working in Europe. But you have to switch to Wi-fi mode.

That's probably because – as the handset indicates – it can't find you telephone number to charge you for the messages. µ