Help Why is Contacts so $%^&ed up in Android?

[sbi]

If there is one thing in Android that will push me back to Blackberry, it is Contacts. Android contacts really drives me off the edge.

I have my contacts on the 'phone' side of the SII; the "View Google" contacts is turned off. Simply because when I travel abroad and I don't have local data plan, I still need my contact.

Anyways, I did two different back ups for my contacts. In both of them my contacts (in the back up file) are doubled or tripled.
I don't get it. WHY is it doubled, where is it coming from?? When I look in contacts, nothing is doubled...everything is nice and clean.
Why does it have to be so complicated in Android?

 

[miller7796]

Why not sync it with Gmail? That way, if you change phones, they will automatically show up on the new phone. The only time I have ever had problems with contacts in Android is when I used the phone's internal storage. You can also create labels in gmail and only show specific contacts based on label. As a former blackberry user, I always had issues with it creating duplicate contacts in Outlook when I synced with my computer. I was happy to see a better solution that didn't require a USB cable and special software.

 

[yohannie]

If there is one thing in Android that will push me back to Blackberry, it is Contacts. Android contacts really drives me off the edge.

I have my contacts on the 'phone' side of the SII; the "View Google" contacts is turned off. Simply because when I travel abroad and I don't have local data plan, I still need my contact.

Anyways, I did two different back ups for my contacts. In both of them my contacts (in the back up file) are doubled or tripled.
I don't get it. WHY is it doubled, where is it coming from?? When I look in contacts, nothing is doubled...everything is nice and clean.
Why does it have to be so complicated in Android?

I would really recommend storing all the contacts to your Google account. I believe you don't need data connection to access them. It's only when you first turn on your phone (for the very first time and log in) that data connection is necessary for the Google contacts to be pushed down to your phone (if someone else can confirm this, that will be great).

I also got kind of messy before when I was storing contacts on the "Phone", but I also had some replicated from "Sim" and then it became a clusterf*ck. Once I moved everything over to Google and wiped Sim/Phone, it was perfect because Google Contacts has an option (on desktop site) where it will automatically search for doubles or triples and merge/delete them into one single contact. Absolutely amazing feature.

Personally, I was where you were before I moved over to Google Contacts completely, but after I did, I feel like Android is actually even more convenient than the other OS's, as far as contacts go. Any time I switch phones, all I need to do is log into the Google Account at the very beginning and then voila, all my contacts are synced. Edits done on the computer or on the phone all sync too, really great.

Edit: Also, if you plan on moving completely over to Google Contacts, I'd recommend not doing the AT&T backup thing. That just is messy and is another step for doubling or tripling contacts.

 

[sbi]

Hmmm. So what you are saying is, that if I had my contacts from Google on the phone, and then I find myself in a place with no data/wifi connectivity (say abroad), I will still have access to my contacts as they were before the 'disconnect'? Obviously I won't be able to synch them, but they will still be on the phone?

BTW - I do have all my contacts synched with my Google account, but I chose to 'turn it off' on the phone and view only the ones on the Phone Address Book for the reason mentioned above.

Edit: Looks like I have most of my contacts synched. I see several contacts that are only on my phone. Is there a way to 'upload' them to my Gmail account without typing anywhere? I tried several synchs but it doesn't move it to the Gmail account.

 

[wolfyboy359]

"merge" your contacts

 

[SGS2]

to add to the difficulty, contacts can be saved 3 ways: to sim, phone and gmail.

i can only say, not knowing your exact settings, to save to sim and gmail only, and make sure they are not saved to phone. then, under contact settings, then more, go into sim management if you wish to save to sim.

also under more is "display options" where you can turn or or off what contacts show on your phone, be it from phone or google/gmail. sim is NOT an option here.

i have a feeling you may have the contacts doubled, which is what you want, but have chosen multiple display options.

a hint is when you go into your contact lists, it shows an icon on the right hand side of EACH contact. if it is google/gmail, a small "g" shows. if sim, a small sim card icon shows, and if phone i am not sure, but again, each contact will have its "source" of where is is coming from.

good luck and let us know if this helped for others to see.

i believe the doubling is because your settings are set to show multiple sources for your contacts at the same time. you can set the phone to show sim and phone and google contacts at one time, and your goal is to only show one source of contacts at a time, so you need to set your phone to ONLY SHOW one source of your contacts, be it google, sim or phone.

 

[sbi]

OK, I think I got it now.

I am aware of the "Saving to" in the phone. As I mentioned, I liked saving my contacts to the phone because I was worried about being able to access my contacts if I am in an area without data/wi-fi (mainly abroad).
I was fine with that until at some point I found out that my contacts are duplicated, tripled, quadrupled and even more. Not sure how it happened and that's what made me so upset. I also wasn't a big fan of the Google address book, but I guess I'll have to get used to it because that's where Android is in its best.

So now when I have my contacts all nice and dandy in my Gmail account, how can I get rid of my phone contacts? There is no need to keep all these contacts and take memory space. Problem is, when I try to delete all, I am getting an error message that says that I deleted too many contacts. Never knew there is a limit to the number of contacts my phone allows me to delete...