When I was shopping for a new cell phone recently, I was really lusting after a Handspring Treo 600. But, it at $500, it was pretty much out of my cell phone budget. So, I thought I’d have to settle for a Nokia 6225i.
After reading Sprint’s manual for the phone, I began to think the 6225i is a lot more capable than it lets on. Unfortunately, the Sprint documentation only covers the Sprint specific phone features. The phone itself has a lot of built in functionality that Sprint doesn’t bother to tell you about.
So, I found Nokia’s documentation for the phone on their website. My main lust factor for the Treo was the PIM capabilities. Specifically the ability to sync with Outlook for contacts and calendar. Turns out the 6225 can do this! All you need is a cable or IR port. Nokia wanted $50 for the cable, that’s a bit pricey for a single use item. I found other folks selling the same on eBay for $29; that’s more my speed still not quite there.
Hmm, I thought. Is there such a thing as a IR port for USB? A little searching around at TigerDirect, and I found the Bafo USB to IrDA adaptor. $19? That’s a no brainer. It also might be useful in making a IR remote control setup for my pc outside of the phone sync application.
So, I plug in the adaptor. Windows XP finds it and already has a drive for it. Cool. I install the Nokia phone manager software and give it a shot. Intial setup is pretty easy, I basically just tell it what I want to sync (calendar, contacts, to-do, etc) and how much (date range for calendar, all contact info vs. just phone numbers, etc). After that I just turn on the IR port on my phone and point it at the adaptor. Bing, Windows XP reports its connected to the phone and the phone shows up in the Nokia software.
So, I click the sync button. It grinds away for a bit trying to figure out all the details of my Outlook setup. Then it starts to sync. The total transfer took about 2 minutes. I suspect that future syncs will be a lot faster since less data will need to be moved.
All in all, I’m very impress on how easy the whole process was. Great job Nokia! I’m looking forward to messing around with other phone management tools (ringer editor, image manager, phone browser) that are included with the sync application.
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