How to make your iPhone immortal: Part 1

Okay, so maybe the title is a bit misleading. If you drop your 3GS off a 17th floor balcony, it will die. There is no doubt. The point of this post is so that when you wrench your new one out of the cold, clammy hands of your insurance company, Apple, the balcony owner, their dog, or the woman who your phone just missed on the way down, you can get your new iPhone working like a treat straight out of the box, but in one piece rather than many small ones...

Through this post, there will probably be solutions to all of these using iTunes. I won't use any of them. I don't like iTunes, and I don't use it very often so I'm looking for more free-spirited solutions.NEXT!

So to the first problem, contacts. When your iPhone explodes into the concrete, so will the all-important contacts that were in there. So, preventative protection 101: Get it on the cloud. I use two separate solutions because one of them  has been a little irritating. The first is the Funambol Client. This is a great little bit of freeware with some quality cloud-based backing. And is it simple! Here's the process:

1. Make an account with Funambol. It's easy, quick and free, and allows you to use everything in the extensive world of Funambol.
2. Download the App. It's free off the App Store, so stop your blithering. Then just type in your username  and password.
3. Start the App. Press the Big Blue Button that appears in the middle of your screen.
4. Done. There is no Step 4. I'm just making this 'step' and making it long, to see how many of you are fooled, and how many actually read through to the 'juicy bit' at the end. Which, unfortunately for those of you still reading, does not exist. This is just a huge pile of vapid nothingness, and you've probably read through all of this, which means I have successfully stolen a small portion of your life that you will never get back. Sorry about that.

Anyway, after following the above procedure, all your contacts and their details are now on Funambol's servers, which you can also access using their internet-based Portal, for when you need to check, restore or change individual contacts with the convenience of a computer. There is no need to use any weird apps or maintain separate lists, it all comes from the native Contacts app. This solution works brilliantly, with only one minor niggle. The iPhone's limited multi-tasking capabilities mean that you must manually go in and press the bug blue button to sync them, and there's no automatic option. That's Apple's fault, but.

And now to the second solution, the more structured solution. This also works off the native iPhone Contacts App, but doesn't use the local contacts as Funambol does. If you use Google Sync, you actually pull all your contacts off Google's Server every time you use them. This has both advantages and drawbacks.

Advantages:

• Over-the-Air automatic updates
• Keeps your contacts in perfect sync without hassles
• More accessible
• You can view the same set of Contacts from any computer, (almost) any phone, anything really
• Quicker
• All your contacts will reflect any changes done anywhere, on anything
• Instantly updates when a new one is available using Push service

Disadvantages:

• If you don't have an internet/data connection, functionality is a bit limited
• GMail Contacts aren't as full-featured and versatile as local ones
• No labels for multiple e-mails, only two addresses, a couple of other bits and pieces like that
• Uses up battery
• Push services use up battery far more than a local service would

Of course, as will become apparent, Google Sync is the better solution, but don't let that stop you using Funambol as well, since it has its charms, and some more useful bits and pieces (No problems with local/server conflicts or gaps!).

Google Sync is a bit more complex to do. It uses an exchange server that you configure under Mail, Contacts, and Calendar under Settings. Head over to sync.google.com for the best explanations, but here is the general gist:

1. Set up the Google Exchange Server, as per instructions here. Bingo. You have your Contacts (and Calendar, see Part 2) coming from Google.

By the way, this is also the only (free) way of getting Push Gmail. Because the native Mail apps support for Gmail doesn't go as far as push, you have to use the exchange server instead, so just flip all the sliders on the Exchange Server and you can receive Push emails. Hooray!

These two are, by far, the best ways to sync your contacts away from your iPhone. You can also use iTunes to sync your local iPhone contacts to Gmail. I recommend you do that once, before you start, then just rely on the Sync functionality, and ignore/delete all the local contacts.

Read on for Part 2: Calendar Backup!

How to make your iPhone immortal: Part 2

So, to the next part of your phone's semi-immortality, saving those precious calendar events. Unless you live in some kind of bizarre Apple-only I-have-more-money-than-I-know-what-to-do-with world where you use your iPhone, iCal and MobileMe, this is probably going to be a bit of a pain-in-the-arse. And whatever you do, don't go buying some weird Calendar app which claims to be just like the native one, but better. Why? Because it isn't.

Of course, one of their biggest draw cards (other than stupendously high prices) is an ability to sync with god-knows-who's secure server, and to protect your data. Of course, that's just as likely to happen as Kevin Rudd's dead body cropping up on my front step tomorrow morning. Actually, no, its less likely to happen than that.

So, don't want to spend $12 on an app that won't work? Want to keep your calendar safe? Easy. The answer, as always, lies in Google. When you set up the Sync service, as in Part 1, flip the slider for calendar, and you have your Google Calendar working like a beer-drinking local on your iPhone.

Of course, there are a couple of other things you must/should do. First up, change the default calendar from the local one to your Google Calendar. This way, when somebody invites you to an event, or another app creates an event for you, it will go into your Google Calendar, and off to that great cloud in the sky. Also, go into your calendar app, choose Calendars at the top left corner, and choose "All Google Sync" or whatever the name is for your Google Calendars. Of course, if you also use another Exchange service, you can't do this, but if not, it helps to reduce conflicts and make sure everything ends up in the same place: Google.

Now, head over to http://m.google.com/sync on your iPhone and work through the options there to choose up to 25 Calendars (if you have more you are a moron, anyway) to end up on your iPhone. Okay, now you're done and ready to go.

How to get the most out of it:

Remember, when it comes to all this work with Google Sync, that means you can use it anywhere you are a t a computer with the internet. Just log in to Google, as usual and any changes you've made will be waiting for you.
This also means that if you drop your iPhone off a balcony, don't bother trying to pick up the pieces. Leave them there for some pigeon to electrocute itself on a capacitor circuit. Just get yourself a new one, re-enter your details and you're back online. Yes, just like that.

And no, we're not offering a free Dustbuster to the first hundred callers who use their credit card...