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The main problem with iSync

W

wilburpan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sorry -- I need to vent.

I've been looking for a new cell phone for a while, and spent a good part of today checking out the local Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile stores, and seemed to be having more than a little trouble finding a phone that I liked that would work with iSync. I went to each store with the list of iSync supported phones.

I finally figured out why I was having such a problem. After all, the list of devices supported by iSync seems pretty impressive.

Until I realized that many of the phones listed are not currently availble.

I compiled a list of all currently available phones from Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, and compared that list with the phones currently supported by iSync under Tiger. Here's the list:

Motorola RAZR v3
Motorola v180
Motorola v220
Motorola v551
Motorola v60i/p/s/t/t color
Motorola v710
Nokia 6620
Sony Ericsson S710

That's it. 8 phones. iSync under OS X 10.4 supports only 8 phones out of about 75 phones available in the U.S. market today. None of the LG, Samsung, Sanyo or currently available Siemens phones are supported at all. I can't believe that only one current Nokia model is supported. I left off the Treo models because I'm specifically looking for phones, not PDA's.

I would hope that support for more phones with iSync improves over time. But to see the level of support to be this low is pretty sad.

Thanks for listening to me rant.
 
I totally sympathize with your main point, but are you sure that list shouldn't include one of the Nokia 36xx variants and Sony Ericson T6xx variants? Those entire families are supported in iSync, AFAIK...and are still for sale by the GSM majors. Not that you'd necessarily want to buy one. But that wasn't your main point.

EDIT: Also, if you want to broaden your point from "There's no phone with iSync compatibility available today that *I* would buy" to "There's a very limited list of iSync compatible phones available period," then you really ought to consider a phone even if personally wouldn't buy it...such as the Treos and the Blackberries.
 
Just buy a GSM phone off the net and pop in your SIM!

But yes, I agree with your point! I am quite satisfied with my T610 from TMobile. Although, I don't know if they sell it anymore...
 
mkrishnan said:
I totally sympathize with your main point, but are you sure that list shouldn't include one of the Nokia 36xx variants and Sony Ericson T6xx variants? Those entire families are supported in iSync, AFAIK...and are still for sale by the GSM majors.
Click to expand...
Not according to the Cingular and T-Mobile websites, or their stores.

Cingular's website does not list the Sony Ericsson T637 anymore, and the only Nokia's that they list are the 3220, 6010, and the 6620.

The only Nokia listed on the T-Mobile site is the 3220. They don't list any Sony Ericsson's.

And even if I included the Treo models on my list, that brings the grand total of currently available iSync compatible phones up to a whopping 10 out of ~75 currently available. Blackberries aren't listed on the iSync supported devices list.
 
You're right about the blackberries! My bad! And I will definitely concede the general point...Apple has to come up with a systematic way, in conjunction with the handset mfr'ers, to offer iSync compatibility on new phones as they come out, preferably from day one. Apple customers are just predominantly not the sort of people who aren't going to be picky about their phone! 😉 I know I was very picky about my last buy. And I probably will be again. ATM, the RAZR probably fits my bill, but I am waiting to see what the iTunes phone is like.
 
I'm pretty pissed off about the lack of choices with the iSync. I also looked up each of the 8 phones listed, and they are generally unimpressive, apart from the S710a and the 6620. My college is in an area in Pennsylvania where Verizon is pretty much the only carrier with acceptable reception. And out of all those phones, the only CDMA phones are the Motorola v710 and the Motorola v60 - both of which are not too great.

I was really looking forward to synching a LG VX8100(to be released over summer?) with the apple, because it's coming out with the same features as the VX8000 but with a few additional perks and bluetooth. =\
 
They didn't support bluetooth motorolas for a while, but now that they do i'm happy. I have a quick question, if I want to send my numbers to my powerbook, do i have to have the numbers stored on my phone or sim card?
 
Yeah, I'm in the market for a new phone right now and I'm having the same problem. I figure if I'm going to be locked into a phone for two years, I want it to have the things that *I* want - yet so few out there are iSync compatible, and so few even have Bluetooth. Bleh.
 
ZoomZoomZoom said:
I'm pretty pissed off about the lack of choices with the iSync. I also looked up each of the 8 phones listed, and they are generally unimpressive, apart from the S710a and the 6620. My college is in an area in Pennsylvania where Verizon is pretty much the only carrier with acceptable reception. And out of all those phones, the only CDMA phones are the Motorola v710 and the Motorola v60 - both of which are not too great.

I was really looking forward to synching a LG VX8100(to be released over summer?) with the apple, because it's coming out with the same features as the VX8000 but with a few additional perks and bluetooth. =\
Click to expand...
I just wanted to chime in regarding the Moto v60 phone. While it's not the most gadgety phone out there, it's a great phone. Holds onto a weak signal like you won't believe. I've made calls even when the phone showed zero bars.

Anyways, I also wanted to say that just because a phone doesn't show up on Apple's iSync list doesn't mean it doesn't work with iSync. To my knowledge, the Moto v265 has never been on the list, yet, I've gotten it to work with iSync without doing anything special. Note that this was with the latest iSync with Jag. I haven't used iSync since upgrading to Tiger.
 
I think it may be the way that mobile makers change the way the phone holds data in each model. If it was so easy to sync the info, Apple would have made an iSync that could easily sync with every phone model. However, this isn't the case, but probably because every phone is different when certain standard things shouldn't be made different for each iteration.

Not sure if this is true, but its the only logical explanation I could think of. 😕
 
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