Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

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Phones
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:37 pm

Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Phones »

Hi

I'm a long time BirdieSync user and have very happy with it using Windows Mobile 6.

I've now updated to Android and am confused - this is probably more due to my not understanding Android rather than BirdieSync but I hope someone here an help me.

I seem to have managed to sync things up, but I'd like to understand how I did this.

Plus I added an event to the phone yesterday and it has not appeared in Thunderbird after a sync.

If I start BirdieSync and go to settings and click on Contacts the option I see this...
Image

I don't want my gmail contacts on Thunderbird so I de-select that

Would I be correct that vnd.sec.contact.phone is my phone?
Can I rename that to be something sensible?

Yet on the events tab things look different...
Image

I also have my gmail account - I don't use Google calender so don't want that synced
and I I have a BirdieSync account and a Phone and Local.

I assume the single event in local is where the event I added lives which is why it did not make its way to my Thunderbird when I synced, so what is 'phone'?
And why do I need a BirdieSync account rather than just syncing everything to Local?

If I go to settings and show accounts I see this screen, what are these?
Image
Is there somewhere on-line I can get information on this.

The FAQ states
There is no official stock task application on Android. Depending on the manufacturer, some devices have no application to manage tasks, some have but with a proprietary application offering no technology to developers to access its data.
This seems fair to me I understand there are a number of apps I can install to do this, and understand why BirdieSync will not know anything about them.

So I've been meaning to try writing an Android app for a while, so a very basic todo app that synced with Thunderbird would make sense as somewhere to start.

Thinking about this - I don't suppose BirdieSync offers any type of plugin api I could use to make my app BirdieSync compatible? (rather than writing my own syncing code)

Oh one further question - I notice the Android calender allows multiple reminders to be set on an event (a very good idea in my opinion) - what does BirdieSync do with these additional reminders?

Sorry for all the questions - I just like to know how these things work, or I can't get my heard around it.

DAve
PS - My comments about writing an app is currently just an idea I will add to my "Possible Projects List"... now... If only I could sync that list with my phone :D

Phones
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:37 pm

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Phones »

I just noticed Thunderbird (well - Lightning, but you all know I meant that right) does allow you to add multiple reminders.
Most cool - I never noticed that in all these years using it.

However I added an event with multiple reminders to my calender, synced, and the event on my phone is only showing the first reminder.

Is this an issue that can be fixed?

Cheers

DAve

Birdy
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Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Birdy »

Hello Dave,

A lot of questions. :) I'll try to answer them...

First regarding contact accounts:
I guess "vnd.sec.contact.phone" is your local contact account (I would say your Phone account). The problem with Android is that nothing is normalized. There is no official name for the local account on the Android device. So each manufacturer can choose its own account name to store the contacts of the stock contact application. So it's difficult for BirdieSync to identify this account as the usual local Phone account and display a more explicit name.

Regarding events;
The Phone account is particular and sometimes used by some manufacturers and never by others... (again it varies along with the manufacturers)
In your case, it seems that your manufacturer uses another account called "local" with the stock calendar application so you might synchronize this account.
There is also the BirdieSync account. Why this account ? Because BirdieSync can only create calendars in this account and not in the other accounts because of Android restrictions... So it is recommended to use this account for synchronization so that if you choose a new calendar to be synchronized in Thunderbird it is automatically created by BirdieSync on the Android device while synchronizing if this calendar doesn't exist on the Android device.
If would be great to be able to simplify all this (accounts is a powerful Android feature but it brings complexity). Maybe it will be improved in the future...

Regarding synchronization settings:
Simply ignore this settings. They have no influence on BirdieSync behavior. BirdieSync is listed because of Android technical constraints I won't detail here. I agree that these settings could be somewhat confusing.

Regarding reminders, originally on Windows Mobile, there was only one unique reminder synchronized. So only one was synchronized. But now Android might allow to synchronize several ones. So it might be interesting to add the capability to synchronize several reminders. In a future version ?

Regarding the task application, as usual it would require time... Not sure it would be necessary to have a BirdieSync API. Actually it might be the contrary: offer a standardized task provider that BirdieSync could use...
Birdy

Phones
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:37 pm

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Phones »

Thank you very much Birdy for that enlightening response.

It makes much more sense to me now.
Regarding the task application, as usual it would require time... Not sure it would be necessary to have a BirdieSync API. Actually it might be the contrary: offer a standardized task provider that BirdieSync could use...
Good point, mind you I suppose that is what the Android SDK does :)

DAve

Phones
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:37 pm

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Phones »

Unfortunately it seems I still have an issue.

I added a second event to my phone, and it does appear it is added to the "Local" calender (see below), and as you can see I selected this calender for synchronisation.
Image

However when I sync these two events are not appearing in Lightning.

Am I still missing something?

DAve

Birdy
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Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Birdy »

as you can see I selected this calender for synchronisation.
Actually you didn't select the calendar "local" to be synchronized. You selected the event account "local" to be synchronized (which means that all the calendars present in this account can be synchronized if selected in BirdieSync options in Thunderbird).
Now to synchronize a calendar in this account, you must have a calendar with the same name created in Thunderbird and selected to be synchronized in BirdieSync options in Event panel/Calendar tab.
Does it help ?
Birdy

Phones
Posts: 16
Joined: Sun Apr 20, 2008 3:37 pm

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Phones »

Cheers for that, it was spot on.

It seems a shame that I will now have my events split across two calendars - one for events created on the PC and one for events created on the phone, but I can understand you have no other option due to the Android architecture. And as you will see its not as if I don't have number of calendar anyway as that is the only way to show types of events in different colours.

In case anyone is reading this having the same problems I'll just finish by showing what I did to get this working.

As shown in a previous post I set the local account for syncing in BirdieSync
Image

I then went into the calendar options on the phone and clicked more
Image
and then calendars
Image

This showed me the name of the calendar (along with all the other calendars on the phone)
Image

Then in Lightning I added a Calendar of the same name
Image

And made sure BirdieSync was set to sync to this.
Image

Simple really ;)

DAve

log-out
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 4:18 pm

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by log-out »

Hi, a question about calendars:

I have a WinMobile 6 phone, but I'll move to an Android very soon...

In Thunderbird I have 3 calendars: a local calendar and 2 google calendars (using "Provider for Google Calendar" extension). Now I only sync google calendars with my phone, but on Android you can sync google calendars without any external tool like Birdiesync. Then, will I only need birdiesync to sync my contacts?

Birdy
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Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by Birdy »

Hello log-out,

If you want to synchronize your Android Google calendars with Google Sync on the cloud and no longer use local calendars, then you may still use BirdieSync to synchronize your local contacts in Thunderbird.
The question would be if you want to share all your contacts with Google. :)
Birdy

log-out
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Feb 08, 2010 4:18 pm

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by log-out »

Hi, Birdy, I finally have my new android phone (sony xperia u) and I did as you say: I sync my calendars with google sync and my contacts with birdiesync :wink:

ldmpub
Posts: 9
Joined: Sat Sep 04, 2010 9:26 am

Re: Windows Mobile user moving on to Android with questions

Post by ldmpub »

Phones wrote:In case anyone is reading this having the same problems I'll just finish by showing what I did to get this working.

As shown in a previous post I set the local account for syncing in BirdieSync
Image

I then went into the calendar options on the phone and clicked more
Image
and then calendars
Image

This showed me the name of the calendar (along with all the other calendars on the phone)
Image

Then in Lightning I added a Calendar of the same name
Image

And made sure BirdieSync was set to sync to this.
Image

Simple really ;)

DAve
Very very usefull tutorial :D , it helps me solve my issue ie : to synchronize my outlook calendar to my TB Lighning through Android and BirdieSync => I only need to create in TB a calendar with the name available in my Android device !

Many thanks I was working around it since several days and I didn't find this info in BirdieSync help nor on the website.

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