Application developers: use Nokia Folder to transfer data between devices
Update: Disclaimer - Data Transfer application is a Nokia specific feature. Therefore, Nokia folder is not a S60 API, and using it is not officially supported by Nokia or S60. Use it the way you want, but with your own risk. I think it’s good.
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Exclusive: important info for S60 application developers, inside and outside Nokia
Does your application generate user specific data - bookmarks, RSS feeds, settings, etc?
Do the users lose their personal data related to your app, when they upgrade to a new S60 device?
Well, here is your solution:
All new Nokia S60 devices have a built-in application called Data Transfer (or Transfer), that is typically under the Tools folder. With this app, the users can easily transfer their personal data from the old device to the new one. In addition, if the user has multiple S60 devices (see Darla’s post), s/he can keep the personal data easily in synch between devices.
Now, dear S60 application developers, if you save your application data under the Nokia Folder, the users don’t lose their valuable application data when switching devices.
Please note:
- “Nokia Folder” means folders C:\data\Nokia and E:\Nokia.
- be careful with file names to avoid conflicts
- the application synchronizes one file at a time. If you put large files in Nokia folder, even a small change causes resending of the whole file. Therefore, having several small files in Nokia folder is better than one big file.
Simple but working solution, isn’t it?
Please spread the word. And if you decide to use this trick, please drop a comment to this blog entry or send me an email (tommi vilkamo at S60.com).
Great idea!
Though..
1) it is a little counter-intuitive (or even not recommended by Nokia guidelines?) to use the C:\data\Nokia instead of the application specific folder. Certain clashes might happen e.g. for numerous settings.txt
2) Does the DataTransfer copy the subfolders also?
I guess a lot of people would appreciate if they could put to C:\data\Nokia just one file with a list of folders and/or files to copy. In many cases it would make the adoption as quick as 5 minutes
Problem with application private folders is that Data Transfer has no access to them. Namespace clashes are easy to create, but hopefully also easy to avoid.
Subfolders are transferred, too.
Great tip. We were using another public folder which can be viewed from the built in file manager to store a database. The reason being that the users could export the db to other devices or even a PC and work on it. OR they could copy their db over when they switched phones.
We’ll switch to the Nokia folder from now on.
Boom
Now if only the syncing part would work better. Tried syncing N93 and N70 and the only way I could get them to sync was to send the application from N93 to N70 (which already had it installed) and then sync. And if I did this twice, I had the contacts twice on N93 and once on N70. Where’s the syncing part if the application only downloads data one way and doesn’t even check if it’s already on the device, one might ask…
But nice to know that now we can sync some of our own data too, but nothing changes on the old ones, right?