Frustration in a silver shell

Everything about the O2 XDA II Mini screams sophistication, class and usability. It's got a comfortable heft, just about the right size without feeling clunky. It's so hot that the stores have been out of stock for weeks, and forums are filled with blissful, happy owners.

It's a Windows-based Pocket PC phone.

So it should come as no surprise that I've been having no end of trouble trying to sync this damn thing with my Mac.

Round one - hang on startup
I'd connected the XDA to the Mac via USB, fired up PocketMac and was fiddling with its preferences when the USB connection was lost. Thinking it might have been a connector issue, I pulled out and re-seated the plug with the phone, but the USB connection wouldn't resurface. As with most Windows platforms, I did a soft reset (ie. reboot) on the phone. And then it wouldn't start up.

More accurately, it got stuck at the O2 splash screen. Even pulling out the battery didn't help - the splash screen would just kept staring at me after it powered on again.

I must have been bereft of my senses when I wiped the SIM after transferring all my contacts to the XDA - I'd lose them for good if I did a hard reset. But a hard reset was the only option left. What choice did I have?

The hard reset wiped the device, and I lost all my contacts. I managed to pull some over from J's phone, but some hard-to-contact-people's numbers were gone for good.

Round two - xBackup
Yesterday, J managed to get her XDA Mini to sync with the Mac, but it involved some complicated and convoluted steps that she couldn't describe over the phone. So I installed ActiveSync on my work machine, did a data backup, and brought my XDA home for her to work her magic.

Since the procedure involved another hard reset, J saved my contact info to a 256MB SD card using the xBackup utility on the XDA. Plucking it out after, she then proceeded to reset the phone and fiddle with the config. Once that was done, we put the SD card back into the slot and fired up xBackup again to restore the contacts data.

But it couldn't find any contact data.

The backup was there - we verified the presence of the file with the File Explorer utility - but we could retrieve no data from it. None whatsoever.

Feeling mighty frustrated at this point, I took comfort in the following facts:
1. I had a backup at work,
2. I'd copied some essential numbers back to the SIM card (good thinking, Robin),
3. I could finally sync with the Mac (but no contacts yet), and
4. Bejewelled 2 is really addictive.

Round three - ActiveSync restore
I still had that backup at work, right?

So I rushed to the office today, connected the XDA Mini to my work machine, got ActiveSync going and started the restore process from the backup file. It seemed to want to rewrite -everything- on the phone, but that would be fine as long as I could get my contact list back.

As the progress bar concluded its activity, I fired up the contact list on my phone to find - nothing.

What!?

The ActiveSync error window claimed that some processes still running on the XDA were preventing it from restoring some backup files, would I like to Retry All? I tried stopping everything else (nothing was running under Running Tasks), even doing another soft reset, but it refused to restore the most important file - the contacts database.

I am soooo annoyed!

K.O.! You lose
Lesson 1: Core lesson - always make multiple copies (hardcopy is best) before doing silly things like wiping your SIM card contacts.

Lesson 2: Reinforcement lesson - Windows sucks! I've screwed up this phone more times than I could ever have screwed up a PC in this short timeframe.

J wants to try the restore process herself, so I'll bring the backup home tonight. But.. urrgh. I'm so disgusted.