Transferring contacts from Nokia 108 to Android

My father uses a basic Symbian feature phone - Nokia 108. It is a decent and robust phone, good for the rough n tough life he leads. Unfortunately, this little wonder is not smart enough for the modern world. So when the time came to transition from Symbian to Android, the one (and important) thing we dreaded was transfer of contacts.

Nokia 108 is a peculiar model. It supports various media formats but doesn't have a file explorer (or Gallery as it's called on Symbian), has Bluetooth but no marking for contacts, saves all contacts to an SD card but only from device memory and supports external memory card but has no micro USB slot. Duh! So my journey began to transfer all the contacts to a smarer LG-L3 II (Android 4.1.2) with a caveat of finding a better way and not doing so one-by-one.

I am a bit reluctant to use third-party apps. So didn't want to install any of the applications either on my PC or on my Android. And here are the things that won't work:

• Mark all contacts -- no marking support
• Rename .nbf (Nokia backup file) to .zip -- 108 won't make .nbf
• Rename BACKUP.DAT (yes, that's what the contact backup in Nokia 108 is and no, I am not screaming) to Backup.zip -- creates an invalid archive
• Rename BACKUP.DAT to Backup.vcf -- shows only the first contact

There just has to be some way to get that BACKUP.DAT file working. Now, in case you haven't figured how to do that, follow these steps:

1. Copy all the contacts from SIM to device. Menu -> Contacts -> Move (or Copy as you like) -> From <SIM name> to phone -> Move all (or One by one as you please)
2. Create a backup of the contacts. Menu -> Contacts -> Back up contacts -> Continue  (note: in order to see the back up menu, you must have a memory card inserted)
3. Tada! The file BACKUP.DAT is created (although you cannot see it using the existing phone)

Now transfer that file to your computer. Use a card reader or insert the card in a different phone and connect it, whatever suits your appetite. I inserted the card in my Nokia X2-02 and connected it via USB to my ThinkPad PC. 

This DAT file cannot be directly used to transfer contacts, neither does converting it to .nbf, .vcf or .zip helps. I struggled a but and recalled from the old times of DAT to CSV conversion. So just rename the BACKUP.DAT to Backup.csv

Try to open the Backup.csv file using MS Excel or Notepad. Make sure it doesn't have any special characters. Once all right, we are good to go.

Google supports importing and exports contacts via a CSV file. 

1. So just log in to your GMail account using PC. Use the same one as the one on the Android device you want your contacts on.
2. At the top-left corner, click Gmail -> Contacts.
3. On the left hand side bar, click Import.
4. If you are using the newer version (and if it doesn't support import yet), select Go to old contacts.
5. From the left hand side bar, click Import Contacts...
6. Choose the Backup.csv file that we had created earlier and click Import.
7. Voila! All the contacts should be imported to the Google contacts.

For more help on importing contacts, visit https://support.google.com/mail/answer/14024?hl=en

Now we have all our contacts on Google cloud servers. We just need to sync them with our Android phone. Make sure the phone is connected to internet and follow these steps:

1. Go to Settings on the Android device. 
2. Select Accounts & sync (or just Accounts in some devices)
3. If you have auto-sync checked (ON), just give it some time. The contacts will be synced automatically. If not, proceed as:
4. Select Google from the account list.
5. Tap your email id (it should be same as the one we used on PC to import contacts from CSV).
6. Tap Contacts. And wait till all contacts are synced.
7. Congratulations!!

This took me some time but it ensured I wasn't using any third-party apps that bloat my system. Also, keeping contacts on Google servers would help ease the switching process the next time.

Hope this helped you.