Transfer contacts from Sony XA2 to Jolla C2

[meolic]

I am finaly ready to start using C2 as daily driver. I have made backup on Sony XA2 to cloud. I want to recover this on C2 to get all contacts and maybe also other data. But, C2 say that there is no available data to recover. What is the correct way to move form onephone to another one? I am using the same Jolla account on both. If already answered, please give me a hint. Thanks!

[rgrnetalk]

https://docs.sailfishos.org/Support/Help_Articles/Importing_Contacts/

[meolic]

Thanks. I have first to find out how to export contatcs on the old phone. I think, SIM is not the solution, because I will not get additional info I have with all contats (birthdate). What is also important for me is how to transfer the content of all SMS messages exchanged with my contacts. And maybe the history of calls?

[filip.k]

I create a backup on SD card regularly. It’s easy to import it on the new phone.

Only create a symlink to user nemo in your new phone in you want to import notes from your old phone in case there is a user nemo there.

Do note that MMS archiving and restore is not supported. At least officially.

[ohnonot]

@meolic

SIM is not the solution, because I will not get additional info I have with all contats (birthdate).

Correct.

What is also important for me is how to transfer the content of all SMS messages exchanged with my contacts. And maybe the history of calls?

Search the forums for commhistory-tool

[meolic]

Contacs successfuly transfered using Bluetooth. Connect both devices, then in app Contacts on old phone select interested records and the share icon appears. Choose Bluetooth. On new phone, clicked on the transffered file and contacts successfully imported.

The bizarre problem I had is that today I added Nextcloud account to my old phone, because backup on OneDrive does not work anymore. I do not why, but this action imported to my pone a few thousand of unknown contacs (!) which I cannot remove. Thus, I had to manually search for my contacs to transfer of of zilion records (otherwise, I could simply select all).

[filip.k]

Is there any specific reason not to use backup file which easily restore contacts, SMS, call history and more?

[meolic]

OK. I grab an SD card from my camera and put on a backup file from nextcloud. Then restore C2 from this backup. Contacts and SMS imported - exactly what I need, no duplicates for existing contacts . Call history and notes not imported - I do not need it. There was one trick - Sony XA2 created backup file with tar.gz ending, but the file is in fact non-ziped tar. Thus I had to rename the file to .tar, otherwise C2 did not recognize it.

[ohnonot]

@meolic

The bizarre problem I had is that today I added Nextcloud account to my old phone, because backup on OneDrive does not work anymore. I do not why, but this action imported to my pone a few thousand of unknown contacs (!) which I cannot remove. Thus, I had to manually search for my contacs to transfer of of zilion records (otherwise, I could simply select all).

I don’t see anything bizarre here: those new contacts obviously come from your Nextcloud. I’m pretty sure you can tell SFOS to not use/sync contacts from there.

[ohnonot]

@meolic

There was one trick - Sony XA2 created backup file with tar.gz ending, but the file is in fact non-ziped tar. Thus I had to rename the file to .tar, otherwise C2 did not recognize it.

I experienced something very similar. It seems that busybox’ tar utility cannot create g-zipped files, only extract them, but it throws no error.
If that was the case for you it has nothing to do with the hardware.

[Firefox84]

I don’t want to promote this way, but i transferred my contacts and messages just by doing a backup on Xperia X and then backing it up on the Xperia 10 II, and it worked. I got transferred 1 to 1

[meolic]

If gzip worked, then the backup file would be 2 MB instead of 11 MB and it could be uploaded to OneDrive - there I noticed limit 10 MB for the implemented method (seems to be different limit for different methods). Thats quite important bug. Has this been reported somewhere?

[ohnonot]

@meolic

Has this been reported somewhere?

Forum search:

Sailfish X cannot restore a Sailfish (non-X) backup (Design issue)

REPRODUCIBILITY (% or how often): Presumably 100% BUILD ID = Any/Sailfish X HARDWARE (Jolla1, Tablet, XA2,…): XA2 REGRESSION: (compared to previous public release: Yes, No, ?): No DESCRIPTION: Backup uses tar. Sailfish X ordinarily uses Busybox tar. It thereby cannot Restore a full tar backup done from ordinary Sailfish. It produces no error messages yet causes massive problems. STEPS TO REPRODUCE: Create a backup on normal Sailfish Restore same backup on Sailfish X that has no other ve…

New user experience could be improved (Sailfish X)

I’ve traced the problem (or rather read it on here). Sailfish has full tar. Sailfish X has Busybox tar, which can’t deal with the tar that ordinary Sailfish Backup creates. It’s fairly easily fixable by first installing NielsDK’s tar: https://openrepos.net/content/nieldk/tar-0 For whatever reason, this makes it possible to create accounts again.

Accounts - Bug in 3.4 when using Backup

@tomas3000 This should fix it for you. I’ve traced the problem (or rather read it on here). Sailfish has full tar. Sailfish X has Busybox tar, which can’t deal with the tar that ordinary Sailfish Backup creates. It’s fairly easily fixable by first installing NielsDK’s tar: https://openrepos.net/content/nieldk/tar-0 For whatever reason, this makes it possible to create accounts again.

Read carefully; some people seem to come to similarly erroneous conclusions.