How to move Android Contacts to your new iPhone

So by today, maybe lots of Android users are using the iPhone for the first time, be it iPhone 4s, iPhone 4 at a cheaper price or somebody’s passed down iPhone 3gs, the third being the case I’m going to discuss. As I’m getting my 4s, I’m passing down my 3gs to John. Before he could get his hands on the 3gs, I have asked him to read all about it, as the workings of an android and ios phone are quite different. I even helped him out by directing him to a few sites which you can also Click Here to see and learn about iPhone unlocking functions. He is all set to throw away his HTC Wildfire that hangs a lot and makes him miss his calls. So moving contacts from Android to iPhone is not as easy as moving from one iPhone with iCloud to another. For iPhone upgrades, we just need to sign out of iCloud on one device and sign in to another device and walla, all our contacts follow suit. For Android, I had a bit of headache last night but managed to get it figured out by this morning.

Firstly, the easiest way to get contacts over to iPhone is to make use of Gmail Contacts. Android has to export the People contacts to Gmail contacts and let the iPhone download it back to Contacts on iPhone. Sounds good? It’s all done wirelessly, no need of plugging in to any PC.
On Android inside settings, there’s a feature called Accounts and Sync. But it doesn’t actually automatically sync your contacts real-time to your Gmail account. Whatever you add in your People (phonebook) does not automatically appear on Gmail My Contacts. So there are a few steps needed.

1) Go to People in the Menu on Android. Click on Menu and then Export Contacts to SD Card. All your contacts will be export as a Vcard file. Note the date your are exporting if you have done this previously before. It will take a while and when it has finished exporting, Go again to Menu and then Import Contacts from SD Card. Once you click that you can choose to Import Contact to Google (your gmail) or to Phone. Choose Import to Google.
The Import process will start and takes a while to get to 100% if you have thousands of contacts. This is the time to set your phone aside and play a bit with your new iPhone.

2) Once done, for me it was already morning, go to Settings on Android, Accounts and Sync and ensure that under your Gmail account, Contacts Sync is ticked. Click on Sync Now, making sure your WIFI is turned on. You will see the Sync logo start to turn and move, and a sync logo appear on top your phone next to the network Signal and Wifi signal. You have to wait a long time once again. Take your morning tea or go for a jog and once you’re back, check your Gmail account on your PC, check your contacts and you should see that your My Contacts is now populated with all the contacts from your Android phone. Here you can edit your contacts to make sure there aren’t any duplicates or numbers you do not need. Make sure the contacts are not grouped, grouped contacts not inside My Contacts will not appear in your iPhone.

3) Go to your iPhone settings, go to Mail, Contacts and Calendar and Add Account. You can add your Gmail account to sync your Mail, Calendars and Notes but it doesn’t sync contacts. So you gotta add another account, and choose Microsoft Exchange. Enter your Email, Leave Domain empty, empty your full email under Username and then your password and go Next. After that enter m.google.com under Server and you’re good to go. Since you’ve already sync mail and calendar, for this Exchange account, just turn on Sync Contacts, and turn off the Mail and Calendars. If your Gmail My Contact had already been populated, you can go to Contacts in iPhone and see all your contacts appear there immediately. Walla. Now you should sign up for iCloud so that from now onwards, all your contacts are synced to iCloud safe and sound.