Mobile phone

[Tim Lamb]

Follow up to the previously discussed Vodafone outage.

After nearly 2 weeks Vf grudgingly admitted there had been an issue without giving any details. This came in the form, Great news, our engineers have fixed the fault at your postcode.

Followed 25 minutes later with a second mail admitting they had failed so to do:-)

Another *great news* mail this morning! We'll see. They didn't say but I guess the outage was restricted to 3g.

Either way, it has forced me to try getting to grips with a less basic phone. The first disappointment was that having fitted the SIM from my old Alcatel, the contacts list was not accessible!

My Motoe5 play is not hugely user friendly in that it seems to expect everything to be run through my Google account!

Tempting to go out and buy a cheap basic 4g phone from Tesco.

[Michael Chare]

If you have no Vodafone mobile phone network coverage wifi calling can be an alternative if you have a phone that can do that. You may also have to ask Vodafone to enable the free feature on your account.

[Tim Lamb]

Indeed. Managed to do that for the pile of accumulated upgrades.

Wifi at home but I may as well use the free land line.

GPS, what three words location and mapping is good on the Moto but it is a bit large/delicate for many of my daytime activities.

I'll reassemble the sim and try the old Alcatel tomorrow.

I also have a gifted Microsoft Lumia to try.

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[Max Demian]

Go into Contacts, bring up the menu from the = thingy (top left corner), choose Settings then Import from the Manage contacts section, then Import contacts from SIM card. The SIM card contacts are listed with the boxes ticked. Choose Import.

[Tim Lamb]

Manage contacts not on the list! I can enter them by hand!

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[polygonum_on_google]

Sometimes you need a new SIM in order to access 4G. Partner is in that position - has a 4G-capable phone but restricted to 3G by the SIM. No cost to her to upgrade but keeps forgetting.

[Chris Green]

That's just Android isn't it, not a specific Motorola issue.

That'll have the same Google dependence surely, unless you go very basic non-Android.

[Andy Burns]

You can avoid it, but everything will be that bit harder without, and whenever you ask "why doesn't X work?", people will either answer with the assumption you are using cloud, or suggest that you should be ...

[Tim+]

Where were contacts stored on your old phone? In ye old days, all contacts were stored on the SIM card but as phones got smarter, they started recording contacts in the phone?s own memory rather than the SIM as then they could store a lot more info.

Your old phone may have been doing this. If you put the sim back into it there may be an option to copy contacts to SIM. If you do this you will get get basic name and numbers copied to the SIM that should then transfer with the SIM to your new phone.

Tim

[Tim Lamb]

They were on my sim card for the last but one phone. I assume they would still be there despite the Alcatel interval?

I can go back and check although re-assembling sims is a pain.

[Tim Lamb]

This is relatively recent sim and the moto display shows 4g signal levels.

[Tim Lamb]

I don't know. Surely it is possible to have a contact list without it being stored by Google?

Doro?:-)

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[Tim Lamb]

I don't mind harder if it means not sharing everything I do with an organisation profiting from harvesting such data. No Alexa's here.

[Andy Burns]

In which case, yes you can either turn off the individual sync options for the google account (contacts, calendar, notes, photos, etc) or delete the google account from the phone altogether ... both within settings/accounts

You'll still have local contact data etc.

[Chris Green]

On Android I doubt it, though maybe it's possible by not using the default 'contacts' app.

Doro are still Android when they're smart phones, you have to go to a 'feature phone' to escape.

[Andy Burns]

You *can* use the default contacts app, with a local database, just not synced to a google account.

[Dave Liquorice]

Yes, just turn off all the syncing with in the google account on the phone. Preferably before you've uploaded/restored your contacts/calendar/etc to the phone. Then never do or set off manual sync for that account.

Deleting the google account will definitely break the link to google but I have feeling the phone will complian about not being able to "phone home" and it may affect your access to the playstore.

[John Rumm]

It worth having it ties to *a* google account, even if not one you use for other stuff, since it can then do a bunch of stuff that is genuinely useful and worth having.

One you have contacts backed up on an account, its much easier to go to contacts.google.com on a computer and edit them there than on the phone. Same as "messages for web" makes it much easier to send and read SMS on the computer.

Import from SIM is a standard part of the contacts app, if you go to settings on the menu.

[Peter Burke]

Tim Lamb [e-mail]> wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Older Moto here but under Contacts (People) there is Settings and under that there is Import/Export, under that there are various options including export to and import from storage (uSD card) so you should be able to transfer via the uSD card.

You may need to search but hopefully there should be an equivalent somewhere on yours.

Mine creates a single vcf file with all the contacts in it, not sure that all providers use the same format so some tweaks may be required.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Peter Burke [e-mail] writes

Now that 3g is back up, I have ditched the Moto and gone back to basic:-)

I think there is provision for transfer via syncing but neither of my old phones are that clever.