Over the Air Sync With Google

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.macworld.com/article/138716/2009/02/googlesync/article.html?lsrc=mwnws' target='_blank'>http://www.macworld.com/article/138...html?lsrc=mwnws</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"On Monday, Google announced that it'd now be offering over-the-air synchronization of Google contacts and calendars with the iPhone, iPod touch, Windows Mobile-based phones, and SyncML-compatible devices."</em></p><p><em><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1234223059.usr105634.jpg" /></em></p><p>If you don't have <a href="http://www.apple.com/mobileme/" target="_blank">Mobile Me</a>, and have been syncing your iPhone with your&nbsp;<a href="http://www.google.com/calendar/" target="_blank">Google Calendar</a>&nbsp;the old school way via direct connection with your computer, this might be a good option for you. It is a beta, and currently only allows syncing contacts and calendars, so your mail still has to be handled separately via IMAP or POP. Also, there are known limitations with the iPhone so Google has created a <a href="http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?answer=139635" target="_blank">site</a> that lists them.</p><p>I have Mobile Me, have for years, and I've finally gotten it to where it works pretty well for me so I won't be changing it up by switching. However, if I didn't have Mobile Me and wanted to wirelessly sync my contacts and calendars, I would probably give this a try.&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><em></em></p>

[Vincent Ferrari]

I believe it was last year when they introduced this for the BlackBerry. I installed it on my Pearl and went nuts as it mangled everything in my phone. Thanks, but no thanks. Say what you want about MobileMe, but the push contacts and calendar work perfectly well. I know it isn't free, but I've had perfect luck and great happiness with MobileMe in general and, like you, have no intention of switching it up.

[crimsonsky]

I was hoping this would work better on my Wing than it does on my Curve. On the Curve, contacts sync fine, but the calendar always fails. Now using Google Sync on the Wing, the same thing happens.

Mobile Me is great if you have an iPhone or Touch, but really no OTA sync with other mobile devices, which is why I had such hopes for Google Sync.

[Dyvim]

Another vote for MobileMe. I hated shelling out for it, but I did get a 5 month free trial (after MobileMe's rocky launch) and in the end it was worth it just for the Contacts\Calendar syncing (esp. between multiple PCs and Macs as well as multiple iPhones).

I played around with Google Contacts and Calendar before MobileMe and needless to say I wasn't impressed. I'm sorry but IMO ANY Contacts solution has to correctly import the default Contacts output from Microsoft Outlook (which is the defacto PIM standard for Contacts in the computer world), and Google Contacts fails miserably. Also they need to support all the major fields (birthdays, anyone?). Otherwise it's useless to me if half the info in my Outlook contacts doesn't make it to the cloud (Google). MobileMe on the other hand had no problem taking my Outlook Contacts and Calendars (the master record) pushing them to the cloud and then pushing them to my Mac and phones and other PCs and keeps everything in sync with no corruptions or deletions yet (knock on wood).

The other downside of Google Sync is that it uses your 1 Exchange connection. I already have a work exchange account, so couldn't use Google Sync for my personal PIM even if I wanted to. That's the other thing that totally rocks about iPhone & MobileMe: you can have it in addition to a full Exchange PIM push sync. I don't know if any other phone systems can offer that (dual work\personal PIM cloud push sync).

[doogald]

I have a WM phone (until my contract is up in December, and I join all you iPhone users), but I discovered a similar service in Nuevasync about six weeks ago and have not looked back. It is FANTASTIC!

Google is the new hub of my calendar and contacts (I never use tasks on my phone anyway, but I think that's coming). I use SpanningSync to get iCal and Address Book contacts into Google Calendar and Gmail, and NuevaSync gets it onto my phone over the air using Exchange sync. It's perfect - much, much, much better than Missing Sync over USB, which was always mangling my calendars - and I never, ever need to plug my phone into my computer at all.

NuevaSync supports 8 Google calendars (rather than Google Sync's current 5 calendar limit). I just hope that this doesn't mean that Google steals all of NuevaSync's business and drives them out of business.