I got a new phone and was terrified about the manual work that would be needed to sync all of my contact details. But then I thought, we’re in 2008 so there must be an open source way of doing this!!

Funambol MobileWe did the trick perfectly! Funambol allows syncing over the air emails, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes with mobile devices. The site reports syncing capabilities with 1.5 billion mobile devices and thousands of online services. You can sync your information from GMail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, Thunderbird, AOL, MS Outlook (if you’re still using it), and emails from POP and IMAP access.

If your contacts are scattered all over the place, like I had, with Plaxo, GMail and other cell phones, first centralize everything in one spot. I chose GMail’s Contacts since I can then sync it nicely to my Evolution.

Then, create an account at  MyFunambol, select your mobile device, go to your profile link, and configure your email and where to sync your information from. After all the configuration is set, you will receive a message on your mobile to download the needed sync app.

After everything is installed, with a click of a button on your phone, all of your contacts will be synced and you’ll even get push emails! Much better then Blackberry and Apple’s MobileMe. With MobileWe you will have a safe backup of contacts, receive push emails and sync contacts even with multiple devices.

End result for me? Contacts nicely synced and my phone displayed even the pictures of my contacts I had created in GMail.

*Note: also supported but not endorsed by this author are iPhones and Windows Mobile OS.