Android contacts is unusable. Who could allow such a bad core app?

[rhippler]

Having been using PDAs from the days of the Psion 3, then windows smart phones for several years, I was very happy to have all my 800 or so contacts with me in an easy to view and search format. And call them.

When I "upgraded" from windows CE phone (touch diamond) to a HTC desire, I was shocked at how bad the PDA functions were. As a businessman, its not usable. Why did google let the core part of the phone, the address book, be so crippled? Did they let their junior team develop it? Do goggle Staff not have any contacts? Below are what makes it unusable:

1) Contact Spam.
Although I have 800 real contacts, the phone thinks I have over 2000. It has put in every email address I have sent from my gmail account (which I stupidly used to create the market account), and every facebook friend. I want neither, ever. Its almost impossible to find my contacts now. Forget scrolling that many even with the "dont show contacts with no phone number" on. You have to search. Which brings the next huge Google gaff:

2) Search doesn't search on organisation.
In fact, it doesnt even show companies in the list so you cant scroll to find them. Great. probably 50 of my contacts are companies, so have no firstname/lastname. These are now gone - there is no way to find them or view them on the phone. They are there, but you cant see them. I had Spend a day going through all my contacts on my pc copying the company name to the firstname to get around this major missing functionality. And google is supposed to be a search company. It doesn't search on other really important fields either, such as notes and addresses. You have to purchase an extra app just to search or see companies: contact search+. It works, but its still painful.

As for #1 just delete all the contacts in ungrouped contacts on the web if you don't want them.

#2 is only true for the HTC people app. If you search from the home screen it will search all fields in a contact for the biz name.

 

[dvhttn]

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6. Viewing address data. I can see all the relevant address information when viewing my contacts.
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I'm with the OP on this one. The default 'People' app on HTC only allows short addresses to be shown entirely. It then goes to a maps app if you touch it. IMHO it should firstly show the entire address and then, if you want to, go to a mapping application (you should also be able to choose which one that's installed on your phone - though a Google written app will choose the Google mapping app, I get that!).

The reasoning here is that a) if I have a contact in my phone I probably know where they live/work. I usually get the postal address because I want to send them a birthday card or something and I use my phone (well, actually, Outlook as my master address book - no physical book) to show me this. If I use a contact for business I still probably want the actual postal address BEFORE I see where they are on a map.

I don't think we're too far apart, just that people do things differently and Google doesn't give you a choice.

I use atakephone for contacts/dialling. It "fixes" the postal address issue and the mapping issue. It also allows you to search most fields in your contacts list, including the company. I would like to see it be able to list things by first name/last name/company as Outlook does and suggested that on a thread here. The dev. said 'good idea' but not sure if/when it'll happen.

HTH

Dave