Help Duplicate Contacts in all SMS Apps

[phred13]

New forum member here. I've found similar threads here (and in other Android forums) but nothing has the same specifics as my issue.

Using a Droid X (not rooted) on Verizon (but from reading online, the problem doesn't seem specific to the Droid.) Since the Gingerbread update (now at 2.3.3 with system 4.5.602) a couple of weeks ago, Handcent SMS has been showing duplicate contacts. Every contact appears twice in the list. I do -not- have duplicate contacts when I look in the native contact list. Nor do I have dupes when I look in my DejaOffice contact list.

For the record - I have -no- contacts listed on my GMail account. Nor do I have a Facebook account on the Droid.

As a test, I installed ChompSMS and had dupes in the contact list. I also installed Go SMS with the same result.

At this point the problem is more a pain in the a** than anything else. I have about 200 contacts (400 with the SMS dupes) but I only regularly text four or five people. So I'm not often looking through the contacts. But it shouldn't be like that and I'm looking for some ideas of how to get rid of the duplicates.

Is anyone else experiencing this? And if so, are you living with it, or did you get the dupes removed?

Thanks.

 

[RyanB]

Are you experiencing the same result with the stock sms app?

 

[phred13]

Thanks for the come-back Ryan.

The answer to your question would be no, but with an asterisk. The stock SMS app doesn't have a contact list per se. It has 'suggestions' based on what I'm typing. But when the suggestions show up, there are no dupes.

 

[RyanB]

I don't see anyone using a Moto device in this thread, but there seems to be commonality in problems here (http://androidforums.com/htc-desire/113907-duplicate-contacts-when-texting-calling.html). There are some suggestions others try and either merge contacts or tweak what's syncing (the latter may be more applicable in your case). I'm kinda stumped as to why they'd dupe for SMS but not for anything else.

 

[phred13]

"Kinda stumped" indeed.

I took a look at the thread you referenced, and while there are some similarities, the one major difference is that I do -not- sync with gmail. My gmail contact list is empty. I have no contacts on gmail.

I think the real mystery here is why is it only happening with SMS apps? Wouldn't you think that if there was a syncing issue, -all- contacts would be duped? But as started in my original post, my native Droid contact list does not contain any duplicates.

Just a thought --- since this happened after the Gingerbread update, how difficult is it to restore it to Froyo? And where would I find it?

Thanks again.

 

[RyanB]

Getting back to FroYo requires root access; you'll want to check out the "all things root" section for Droid X phones.