FoneLink

FoneLink (39.95€ for a single license) is a frustrating application to say the least!!!

I use it with my N95 to sync with my Mail (including To Do and Notes), iCal and Address Book. It does all that very well indeed with two exceptions:

1. It hates recurring items!!! If you move or delete a recurring item in a particular week FoneLink still syncs it to your phone, and
2. It is pretty unstable i.e. it often hangs while picking up the data on the Mac and as a result often creates duplicate entries and even at times removes all the groups from the Address application

The good news is that I have very few recurring items (I guess by definition if an event is recurring you should probably remember it anyway!!!) and purging the N95 of all the data and re syncing is very easy.

Syncing music is pretty easy, with the option to sync directly with iTunes. The ‘Copy Playable Only’ option is pretty cool re DRM music, or you can copy and convert to AAC.

Syncing Photos is nowhere near as good though, and to be honest I would sort of forget about storing photos on your phone that you hadn’t taken on the phone itself unless they were photos that you ‘just had to have’.

A feature that I really like is the Ringtone Editor which is very easy to use indeed!!!

I sync via bluetooth which is really convenient, but you can use a cable as well, which is quicker, and I would certainly advice that for your initial music and photos syncing. There is an option to only sync music when the phone is connected via USB.

All in all it is a very adequate application indeed. It is important not to be too judgmental, as Mac users we are used to seemless syncing and great interfaces, and to be fair FoneLink does a good enough job of trying to give us what we are used to. Take the seamless syncing of the iPhone out of the equation and FoneLink is as good as anything that I have used, but it still has the feeling of ‘forcing a square peg into a round hole’ but as I said that is primarily a function of the phone not FoneLink.

A lot will depend on how addicted you are to syncing, or how much you need your Mac data on your phone. I am addicted, but don’t have a huge need. My main reason for using FoneLink was to sync the Notes and To Do, and for that reason alone it is worth it for me.

The missing link between Mac OS X and your cell phone!

“Most cell phone manufacturers do not offer a Macintosh solution, but FoneLink bridges this gap. Our cell phone suite offers a familiar Mac-like solution to exchange files, synchronize data, manage SMS text messages as well as media files and to backup and restore cell phone contents.

FoneLink works with Mac OS X 10.4.9 and higher, including Leopard, and supports many symbian and other cell phones from Motorola, Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

• FoneLink is the easiest way to transfer files and media data from your cell phone to your Macintosh computer and back.
• FoneLink allows you to synchronize contacts and dates, tasks, notes and bookmarks with built-in support for Apple’s Sync Services technology (Sync with Address Book, Entourage, others)
• FoneLink includes a full fledged SMS text manager to send, receive and archive SMS text messages. It supports group SMS as well as multipart SMS and is linked to Address Book.
• Using FoneLink, you can copy music files, photos and videos and convert them for best viewing on your cell phone as well as synchronize iTunes playlists and create ringtones.
• Using FoneLink, you can backup the cell phones’s data and restore single files or a complete backup, if needed.
• Feel at home: FoneLink supports English, French and German in the program and in the manual with more languages to be supported soon.