How to upgrade to the iPhone 3G - Importing SIM card contacts

Importing your contacts is easy with this how-to guide.

This is Joshua Dubois, a professional videographer and editor, explaining exactly how to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. It’s a simple process and I will break it down if you can’t be bothered to watch the video.

1) Erase all the data off your previous iPhone for privacy reasons.

2) Take out the SIM card. You can use a paper clip. Now you’re ready to hand off the iPhone to its new user.

3) Grab your new 3G iPhone and sync the contacts with iTunes. All of your contacts will be kept on your computer so don’t worry about nothin’. If you’re upgrading from something other than iPhone, just take the SIM card out and put it in your new iPhone.

If you’re putting a 2G SIM card in your iPhone, you’re going to want to do the following on your iPhone:

iPhone 3G menu > Mail/Calendar/Contacts > Import SIM contacts >SIM import

Lastly, you can also grab contacts from Gmail and export them to address book where importing to your iPhone is a cinch.

Exporting your contacts via Gmail

Gmail > Contacts > Export > vCard format

Any questions? Send them to kyle at quicklybored dawt com and I’ll get an answer for you.

8 Responses to “How to upgrade to the iPhone 3G - Importing SIM card contacts”

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1 Mark
July 14, 2008 at 8:20 am

Thanks, but it didn’t work for me. Around 10 of my 100 contacts where imported - no errors, no comments, no show for the others! Preparing to type them in…
2 Kyle
July 14, 2008 at 6:27 pm

Did you make sure to save your contacts to the SIM card?
3 Brad
July 16, 2008 at 6:05 pm

I have a Blackberry Pearl and will be upgrading to the 3g this week. I want to port the contacts in the Pearl (which comprise of many related phone numbers other information) to the iPhone by moving all to the SIM card. Doing this, however,results in separating any multi numbers per name into one number per name.

QUESTION: Will the iPhone repair the split names and numbers so that there I can easily have one name per group of related numbers?
4 Kyle
July 16, 2008 at 7:06 pm

First off, the SIM move is a pain in the ass. Not only will the iPhone not remerge the numbers to a single contact, but you will have to save them to the SIM one at a time.

There is a solution but I need more information from you such as:

Mac or PC
BIS or BES
What is your email client? (ie Outlook)

Comment again and I’ll get back to you ASAP.
5 Drew
July 19, 2008 at 9:35 am

Hey,

Would you happen to know of a way one can import their blackberry contacts into gmail? I too just got the iPhone 3g and want my contacts on both the 3g and gmail. All of my contacts are currently on a blackberry 8700.

- Drew
6 Michael
August 11, 2008 at 7:54 pm

hey

how can i erase all my contacs at once
7 Kyle
August 12, 2008 at 10:59 am

@Michael

Why don’t you just restore your phone and tell it not to sync the contacts.
8 roman
October 3, 2008 at 10:48 am

Ibought new “Phone 3G”. When was tried to inport contacts from SIM card was surprised that even 20 min without any results. Wa used update programm from ITunes. After then more then 250 contacts was imported to phone withi 10-15 sec0

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