Copying BIG files to the mobile phone

p3600i Jul 1, 2008

Bit frustrating to find that Windows seems to have a limit on how big a file can be, if you are transferring it to your phone the official way (by ActiveSynch). But a step back first.

Pocket Wikipedia is now available for Windows Mobile phones, like my HTC p3600i. It’s a subset of the main Wikipedia that as they say only (ha ha) is “about the size of a fifteen volume encyclopaedia (24,000 images and 14 million words)”

But the problem is that the Wikipedia content itself is in one big file.  Now large is a relative term. But 192 MB is large for mobile phone transfers.

And Microsoft’s ActiveSynch kept apparently re-starting after a few minutes.  I tried some other file manager software but it wouldn’t work.  Then I had a brain wave: FTP (File Transfer Protocol).  An ‘old’ but reliable way to move files about networks.

Within a few minutes I had:

  • Installed an FTP server on the PC with the big file on it
  • Installed an FTP client on the mobile phone
  • Configured the phone to use my home wireless network
  • Connected away

Right now, as I type, it’s transferring happily. It even has a resume function, which was needed when the phone went into sleep mode after 2 minutes. Oops. Fixed that by temporarily telling it to not sleep.

Tags