Getting contacts from device to device is always something that throws up a few quirks - something usually gets lost, whichever method (sync, utility, SIM card, etc) you use. Yash over at UnleashThePhones has faced the same thing many times and he seems to have thought of an approach that I'd not seen before, essentially combining multiple exported vCards to one importable .vcf file that imports easily into iTunes or Google (Gmail) Contacts. Nice one, Yash - this approach is a little geeky but does perhaps offer the most 'complete' transfer of any current solution.

From the tutorial (which does assume that you have access to a Windows PC):

1. Open Contacts app on your Symbian phone.
2. Open Options and Select Mark > Mark All.
3. Open Options and Select Copy > Copy to Mass Memory / Memory Card.
4. Connect the phone to the computer and copy the contacts folder to computer [eg. - D:\Contacts]
5. Open Command Prompt [Press Windows Key + R and type CMD]
6. Navigate to D:\Contacts in Command Prompt and enter the following command: “copy *.vcf allcontacts.vcf”

This will combine the multiple vcf files you copied over from the Symbian phone to that contacts folder into a single vcf file.

You can read the whole piece here, with introduction and a little more context. 

It's a nice idea and of course we've seen some third party utilities that essentially automate some of this, but it's always good to do things totally 'old school' (and thus understand better what's going on).

Comments welcome if you have need of this technique. How well did it work?

On a related subject, my own contacts have become such a mess after almost 20 years of shuffling from platform to platform, after contacts moving, marrying and (sadly) dying, after sync with multiple services, that I'm contemplating a New Year refresh in which everything gets deleted and then only selective contacts and detail re-inserted. Does this sound like something you'd like to see a tutorial for?