An Ex-Blog – Comments Are Closed

My phone contract was up recently, and as an incentive to sign on for another year, my provider offered me a free upgrade. So I took the LG Viewty also known as the LG-KU990.^[1] I’ll do a full review later, but for the moment, I want to talk about one issue I’ve experienced with it.

I go through so many phones that I like to keep my address book on my MacBook and sync it with my phone. While the Viewty does have Bluetooth, it’s not supported by iSync. Even worse, Bluetooth File Exchange couldn’t see any of the files or folders on the phone^[2].

I had the same problem with my Nokia 3120, so I was somewhat hopeful that I’d find an iSync plugin to get me up and running.

After a lot of searching, I discovered that LG use their own OS on the phone which is overlaid with Flash screens to enable interactivity. Worse still, LG don’t implement the SyncML protocol used by the other major manufacturers, and by iSync. So there’s no way to sync my brand new phone with my MacBook.

My only concern is the phone book, I don’t use iCal, and I really don’t want to have to manually enter every name in my Address Book. Luckily, there is a work-around, and here’s how:

• Open Address Book,
• Use CMD-A to select all the entries in your Address Book,
• Navigate to “File” -> “Export” -> “Export vCard…”,
• When prompted save the vCard.

The next step involves connecting to the Viewty via Bluetooth. If you have not paired the devices before, then you should do so now.^[3]

• Click the Bluetooth icon in the Menu Bar and navigate to “Browse Device”,
• Select your phone name from the list and click “Browse”,
• Tap “Yes” on the Viewty to accept the incoming connection request,
• On your Mac, click the “Send…” button in Bluetooth File Exchange,
• Locate the vCards file that you saved earlier, and click “Send”,
• Once the transfer has completed, the Viewty should prompt you to “Restore Contact backup file”, tap “Yes”.

And that’s it. Your Address Book has now been copied to your phone.

1. I’d usually link to the official site, but it’s flash based and doesn’t work on Mac OS X – and there doesn’t seem to be a text based version available [↩]
2. Even though Bluetooth File Exchange won’t display any files or folders, the phone is still connected via Bluetooth and files can still be transferred in the normal manner. [↩]
3. Short and simple explanation: Turn on Bluetooth on your Mac, turn on Bluetooth on your phone, click the Bluetooth icon in the Menu Bar, select “Set Up Bluetooth Device” and follow the Setup Assistant. [↩]

Tags: bluetooth, isync, ku990, lg viewty, syncml

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 23:48 and is filed under Hardware, Mac OS X, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.