Help galaxy contacts

[niro0070]

hi, i have the galaxy s2 and i'm having problems understanding a few things.
first,what is the difference betweening merging contacts with google and synching them with google.

secondly,i created a few new contacts and wanted them to also be backed up on my google account so i pressed "synch now".
what happened was that:
the new contacts indeed appeared on my gmail account HOWEVER all changes that i have made to old contacts on my cell were restored on the cell to the way they were on gmail
as if i hit a restore button
i was under the impression that ifi hit synch the synch is from the cell to google and not vice versa cause it's absurd...

i would tremndously appreciate your help

 

[lunatic59]

Hello and welcome to Android Forums!

There are actually three types of contacts. Those stored on your sim card, which contain minimal information such as one name and number per contact. Then there are phone contacts which will be stored on the phone and only backed up if you do it manually. Then there are Google contacts. These contain the most information and are sync'ed to the gmail account that your phone is registered to.

sync works in both directions, using the newest information. If you manually edit a contact in gmail, it will appear on your phone and if you add a Google contact to your phone it will appear in gmail.

Making a contact a Google contact is not the same as joining it to a Google contact, even if that contact is a duplicate. If you make a contact a Google contact then it will sync and contain info and options not available in phone contacts. If yo join a phone contact to a Google contact, it will display in the contacts list with that contact but the information won't sync. Android assumes you want phone contact information kept separate from gmail.

 

[niro0070]

ok i'm a bit confused

when i bought this phone i transfered the contacts through the SIM card and then synched them with google.
so now every time i changed something in a contact i need to sync it again? and why when i synched it it restored changes i made.

and final question what does the "merge with google" button do?

thanks a lot!

 

[lunatic59]

If the contacts show up in gmail, then the sim contacts are redundant. If you've got duplicates you can either join them or delete the sim or phone contacts. sync makes sure the contacts on your phone are the same as in gmail. If you change or add a contact in one place it will be modified in the other as well. Unless you've got sync turned off, you should never have to manually sync.

I don't know what merge to Google does, I've never seen it.

 

[Russell Ng]

This is what the merge does to the contacts in the phone;

1) All the contacts gets a G icon beside the name.
2) When you tap on the contact, you now have tabs at the top showing info, History, Activities & Media. The history seems nice since it is easy to find previous msg, or calls directly connected with the contact. Don't know what the others are for.
3) The only problem is you cannot un-merge. The only way is to redo the contact one by one. Maybe there is another way say like restoring a previous backup, but my backup was nearly a month ago, so that doesn't help either.

So I seriously suggest you think carefully before doing that. I actually did it by mistake since I thought it was a shortcut for syncing with google mail. I also do not know what that does to the contacts in Gmail now.

Cheers

 

[niro0070]

in other words i'm kinda screwed for hitting that button a few times cause now there is no way back :/ well hope it won't cause me any problems in the future.

i thank you all a lot