iPhone iOS4 upgrade

I’m writing this post as a quick reference for those of you who don’t wish to wade through all of the people bashing Apple for this and that.  It is simply a helping hand to get you on the road to having the new iOS4.  If you’ve heard that you might lose all of your contacts, apps, etc when you upgrade, then you likely are trying to be extra careful when upgrading.

Protecting your downloads

Saving your apps and music downloads is as simple as connecting to iTunes, right-clicking on your phone in the list and choosing “Transfer Purchases”. After a few minutes, all of your apps and other purchased content will be in iTunes!

Yes, that’s all. Really.

Sync your contacts anyway!

SO many users I hear from don’t sync their contacts! Even if you aren’t upgrading why wouldn’t you want to keep them safe. After all, it probably took you a while to build your list, and what if you lose your phone or drop it into the swimming pool?

If you use gMail (or even if you don’t for that matter), using Google contacts is a pretty good way of keeping everything safe. Even if your whole computer AND phone died, your contacts would live on. If you have a Google account, great – if not, sign up for one and log into gMail.

Once you get iTunes open and your iPhone is plugged in, find the Info tab, and the contacts section.

Choose to sync with Windows Contacts (if you’re on a Mac, sync with Address Book). This shouldn’t take very long, and when the sync is complete, you can open Windows Contacts and see all of them there!

Export to .csv & Import to Gmail

With Windows Contacts open, click the Export button in the toolbar and it will ask you to choose a file name. Click browse and save it somewhere that it will be easily accessible (like the desktop).

Back to your Gmail account, click the contacts link on the left side, and you will see an “import” link at the top right. This will ask you where your .csv file is, so select it and click import.

Congratulations, your contacts are synced to Gmail!

Use Google Contacts from now on

Personally what I would do is delete ALL of my contacts from my iPhone before setting up syncing with Google. If you aren’t comfortable with this, it’s understandable but just remember that you may end up with a few duplicate contacts, depending on how your current setup is. But hey – you now have TWO backups of your contacts – one in Windows Contacts, and the other that you just imported into Gmail!

Back to iTunes – where you selected to sync with Windows Contacts, simply change this to sync with Google Contacts, and it will display a popup to enter your Google credentials.

Now even if the update deletes your contacts – YOU’RE SAFE!