Ms. Fixit

I just transferred my mom's contacts to her new iPhone using an eraser, an earring, and tape. An unlikely-sounding combination of tools, I know, but they worked.

She had the contacts saved on her phone, and the guys at the AT&T store couldn't get them to transfer, even after putting them on the SIM.Her old phone was a Sony Ericsson w300. It has a normal-sized SIM card. The iPhone 4 has a microSIM card, which means she couldn't just use the old one, and the new one is too small for the old phone.

So we came home because it was late, figuring we'd either try using my old M1 memory card (yay Sony Ericsson for not even using standard SD cards!) or have to put the numbers in by hand. Well, my old phone and its memory card are in Berkeley, so that was ruled out.

I did a little Googling this morning, and found that someone mentioned having aligned the microSIM properly in the old phone, allowing them to copy their contacts to the SIM. Okay, I thought, worth a shot. So I traversed the house, searching for things that would work, and laid out my array of tools.

Eraser: The Sony Ericsson w300 has a little indentation where it looks like you should slip your nail under and pry it up. Look at the instructions, and it says it's actually a sliding cover. Trick to make it actually slide open? Put a flat eraser on top for grip. Works like a charm.

Earring: You're supposed to use a paperclip to poke into the hole on the iPhone 4 to eject the little microSIM tray. I couldn't find any, so I just used the back of an earring that was lying around by the pencils (where that paperclip should've been!).

Tape: MicroSIM needs to stay in place? No problem, just line it up and tape it in! It actually took two tries to get it just right.

And then store to SIM/Smartchip (who calls it that?), move it back to the iPhone, go to Settings, Mail/Contacts/Calendar, and Import from SIM.

Ta-da! Now the contacts are in the iPhone with weird semicolons because of Sony Ericsson's strange formatting, but at least they're there!