finally (after nearly two and a half years) i managed to improve my mobile phone. i installed a cyanogenmod rom and so could upgrade from android 2.3.4 to android 4.1.2, and eventually got rid of ballast like facebook, whatsapp, sony ericsson, and all the apps and games which i never liked, and i could never delete permanently, and which took up precious space and resources - a real nuisance. since my phone is pretty old (around three years), i could not make use of the new way of installing cyanogenmod via the handy CM install app. instead i had to do it the old way. so, after downloading the latest version of the cm rom (which was "iyokan-10-20131006-NIGHTLY" for me), i followed the instructions as described in the cm wiki. it all went quite smooth, except for the fact that "fastboot" is available via the repository only for ubuntu 14.04, while i still cling to 12.04. so i got the source files, and compiled it myself. but once rebooted, i noticed i was missing all the google apps. to get them i once more followed the excellent documentation on the cm wiki describing how to install the google apps. as soon as this was done, the contacts, calendars, etc. were all synced. the only thing that was left to do, was to reinstall all my apps that i had installed before the new android version. all in all, a really smooth switch. if i had known it would be that easy, i would have switched earlier. lazy me. i am really happy with my shiny new android 4.1.2.