Getting ready for my new phone - Verizon - BB to iPhone

Drez

So, I had a thread a couple of weeks ago on how to move to my own line from a family plan, while keeping my own number. I'm about ready to make the switch and do an upgrade at the same time, but I have a few concerns.

I am going for an iPhone 4S (my mind is made up on that). Right now I have a Blackberry Storm.

1) I am going to do this at work, on my lunch break. I won't have access to my iTunes account until that evening. Is that required for activation, or will Verizon be able to link my account to it at the store? And if they do link it at the store, will anything I do with it that day get wiped when I go home and plug it into my PC?

2) Contacts: Does the Verizon phone number backup assistant thingamajig work with the iPhone, or do I need to copy all my contact information down (manually) first?

3) Visual Voicemail: Will I keep my voicemails on Verizon's server? Does iOS have an equivalent to Visual Voicemail? I have a few voicemails from my mother who passed away last year and I would like to hold on to them, but I have been unable to figure out how to keep or export them. I'd rather not lose them. I wouldn't mind starting fresh on my new phone, but I want to at least store these messages somewhere. Any ideas?

4) I have an iPad. Do I need to worry about setting up different sync profiles for each object in iTunes? I don't really know how that works, but I do know I don't want the same exact content on both devices.

Thanks.

Esh

Drez wrote:

So, I had a thread a couple of weeks ago on how to move to my own line from a family plan, while keeping my own number. I'm about ready to make the switch and do an upgrade at the same time, but I have a few concerns.

I am going for an iPhone 4S (my mind is made up on that). Right now I have a Blackberry Storm.

1) I am going to do this at work, on my lunch break. I won't have access to my iTunes account until that evening. Is that required for activation, or will Verizon be able to link my account to it at the store? And if they do link it at the store, will anything I do with it that day get wiped when I go home and plug it into my PC?

2) Contacts: Does the Verizon phone number backup assistant thingamajig work with the iPhone, or do I need to copy all my contact information down (manually) first?

3) Visual Voicemail: Will I keep my voicemails on Verizon's server? Does iOS have an equivalent to Visual Voicemail? I have a few voicemails from my mother who passed away last year and I would like to hold on to them, but I have been unable to figure out how to keep or export them. I'd rather not lose them. I wouldn't mind starting fresh on my new phone, but I want to at least store these messages somewhere. Any ideas?

4) I have an iPad. Do I need to worry about setting up different sync profiles for each object in iTunes? I don't really know how that works, but I do know I don't want the same exact content on both devices.

Thanks.

I can only answer #4. They'll have different profiles.

Drez

Thanks.

xThanatoSx

Drez wrote:

So, I had a thread a couple of weeks ago on how to move to my own line from a family plan, while keeping my own number. I'm about ready to make the switch and do an upgrade at the same time, but I have a few concerns.

I am going for an iPhone 4S (my mind is made up on that). Right now I have a Blackberry Storm.

I'm sorry.

1) I am going to do this at work, on my lunch break. I won't have access to my iTunes account until that evening. Is that required for activation, or will Verizon be able to link my account to it at the store? And if they do link it at the store, will anything I do with it that day get wiped when I go home and plug it into my PC?

The 4S can activate via wifi, which the store should have. As long as you have your Apple ID and password, this really isn't too much of an issue.

2) Contacts: Does the Verizon phone number backup assistant thingamajig work with the iPhone, or do I need to copy all my contact information down (manually) first?

If you've got backup assistant running on your Storm, make it do one last backup before activating the 4S. When you activate the 4S, you'll need to download an app called "Verizon Contact Transfer" or something similar (I'm not at work - can't check the actual name - the store should be able to tell you). This will pull your contacts in from the backup assistant server, but all future contact backups will be done via the itunes sync.

3) Visual Voicemail: Will I keep my voicemails on Verizon's server? Does iOS have an equivalent to Visual Voicemail? I have a few voicemails from my mother who passed away last year and I would like to hold on to them, but I have been unable to figure out how to keep or export them. I'd rather not lose them. I wouldn't mind starting fresh on my new phone, but I want to at least store these messages somewhere. Any ideas?

Ok. This is going throw a wrinkle into this. When you move from a non-iPhone to an iPhone - it destroys the original voice mail box because the iPhone has its own VVM platform. There is a 3rd party company Verizon contracts with to get the voice mails saved to a CD - the store should be able to look that information up for you. If you've got VVM on your Storm though, I think you should be able to download the message as a .wav file and save it that way. I'm not 100% sure as I very seldom have to deal with VVM at all.

4) I have an iPad. Do I need to worry about setting up different sync profiles for each object in iTunes? I don't really know how that works, but I do know I don't want the same exact content on both devices.

Thanks.

Already answered.

Drez

Awesome, thanks! Actually, I meant to post earlier, but I figured out #3. VVM on the Storm allows you to "archive" the voicemail, which saves it to your phone as a .qcm file. I am sure I can find a codec for that.

I am so looking forward to this change.

xThanatoSx

Heh - and believe me when I say that VZW tech support is quite happy for there to be one less BB Storm in the wild

Enjoy your new iPhone.

Thanatos

On #2, the way I have always done it is to use Blackberry's desktop manager to export to a .csv file, import that .csv into GMail, then sync that with the phone. So, if the Contact Transfer app doesn't work, you can do this even after the BlackBerry is no longer active.

It's a huge pain in the ass, but once it's done, you're done. Also, make sure you uninstall that Blackberry Desktop Manager bullshit when you're done.

And yes, congratulations on no longer having a Blackberry Storm.

Drez

Not a bad idea. Thanks

Raif Severance

In regards to the voicemail thing: My mother-in-law passed away a little over a year ago and we ran into the same problem of saving a voicemail before switching phones. What we did was just put it on speaker phone and record it on the computer -- not very elegant, but it worked surprisingly well. There's some loss in quality obviously, but it was barely noticeable for us.

Edit: I had a BB Storm when I switched, man I hated that phone. The only thing I miss is BB messenger.

Drez

I stopped using BBM ages ago. It was great when I had friends that used BBs but everyone migrated to iPhones or Droids. Basically I had like a dozen friends all get Storms when they first came out. I'm pretty sure all of us grew to hate them rather quickly.

corky842

For the voicemails, just get a 3.5mm male to male cable, then connect the headphone jack of the blackberry to the microphone port of your computer. Then you can play the voicemails and use something like Audacity to save the file.