Synchronizing calendars, contacts etc between Samsung Galaxy Phone and Thunderbird email client
How to synchronize and backup your Samsung Galaxy with your PC
I recently bought a Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. While its an excellent smartphone I struggled to synchronize my calendar and contacts. The fact that I am a Thunderbird email client user did not make things easier. Here are a few tips on how to synchronize your data between phone and PC.
The problem
I have always been a Thunderbird user. Ever since I lost data on previous versions of Outlook back in 2006, I stopped using Outlook and switched to using Thunderbird email client. I must be honest though, Outlook probably has improved a lot in the meanwhile, but Thunderbird is simple, easy and without fuss.
Having said that, Thunderbird users are always left in the dark when it comes to synchronizing calendars and contacts. Previously I owned a Nokia, and found that BirdieSync was a good solution for syncing with Thunderbird.
With the Samsung Galaxy S4 I had a look at the possibilities again, as Kies was just not working for me.
The solutions
Synchronizing contacts
At our offices we use the community version of Egroupware. All our contacts, including all my personal contacts are stored in EGroupware. With the Samsung Galaxy S4 I found that the 4myPAL SyncML app worked very well to synchronize the Galaxy phone with our server. I have used it without incident.
Unfortunately I have never been able to successfully directly sync Thunderbird to the EGroupware server. (Let me know if you have a solution that works well for you)
Synchronizing calendars
Thunderbird has a nice Google Calendar addon that works well. I found that by using a Google Calendar makes it easy to edit my Calendars in Thunderbird or on my phone, and still have them sync automatically in the cloud. (Not all people are comfortable trusting Google with their Calendars, but it is not a problem for me).
Still the one problem that I had is that it seems it is not really possible to accept meeting invitations on Thunderbird and have those meetings entered into you Google calendars. To accept meetings, you still need a Thunderbird calendar. I also found that I could not use the task manager with a Google calendar; you also need a Thunderbird calendar for this. So unfortunately syncing through Google was not a complete solution for me.
Synchronizing tasks etc
I like to keep track of my tasks in Thunderbird. I could have used Google's task manager. Thunderbird also has a nice plugin for Google tasks. The problem with Google's task manager is that they are way too limited in functionality for my use. For instance: you cannot create repetitive tasks in the Google task manager.
Synchronizing: the complete solution (for me at least)
Ultimately I came across a freeware tool that solves all my problems very well: MyPhoneExplorer. I must say that it really works like a charm.
Both Outlook users and Thunderbird users can use this tool to synchronize calendars, contacts, todos and even notes. I have used it on Thunderbird with great success.
The only drawback perhaps is that it does not work in the cloud. It is still convenient enough as it has modes to sync over WiFi, Bluetooth or USB. I used the WiFi option and that worked very well for me. As long as my laptop and phone is on the same network I can keep Thunderbird synced to my phone.
Conclusion
It would appear that it is difficult to find a single solution for syncing your Samsung Galaxy phone that works well for all situations. I can recommend MyPhoneExplorer as it covers probably 95% of all sync requirements.
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