Develop Bugs

Help understanding phonebook!

First of all, hopefully people will forgive me for not putting this with the other person's issues with the phone book as mine are slilghtly different.
Basically, I'm not understanding what is going on in my phonebook. Previously I was thinking that my Desire was syncing with All Contacts. But that's not what it's doing. Well, at least not only what it's doing. These are some of the issues that I'm having and I can't explain.
When I tap People - Menu - View, is shows "Google (781)" with "show auto GMail contacts" unchecked. However I have 339 entries in my GMail account for My Contacts and 653 All Contacts. I don't understand the difference.
When I have an unknown number contact me, and I add them to a known contact, "Jo Bloggs" say, when typing in "j - o - ..." I can have up to 3 entried pop up of Jo Bloggs. But then when I go to my People's list, I only see one entry. And in my All Contacts list, I only have one entry.
When I go to add an unknown contact to a known contact, in the list that pops up of (I'm assuming) all my contacts, there are contacts there that I do not see in my People list. I have unchecked "show auto GMail contact" so what is happening?
Can anyone PLEASE explain some of this. I'm trying to clear up my phone book and remove these duplicates and dead weight that I can't always see. It's obviously not simply a problem of syncing All Contacts when you don't want to.
Has anyone noticed any strange behaviour in their People's list???

I also find the phone book confusing along with the texting
I don't know if it is just me not use to smart phones
my last phone was the Sony Ericsson C 902

Did you sync with face book too? As that will added any contacts from their that have phone numbers.

I do not use anything like facebook
so no i did not

Nope. Haven't synced any social networking site at all.
I like to try and get one set sorted at a time. I have another account synced up for the calendar (not contacts). However they share exactly the same contacts so that wouldn't account for the mess of some contacts having no links, some having up to 3 that aren't duplicates. Not that I can find where these contacts came from anyway!

Why dont you copy the numbers you have from your old phone to the SIM card, .. and then import those contacts from SIM card to the Desire (if thats possible). try this before syncing with Gmail and see how it works

sorry to hijack thread but when you have an incoming call and you have a photo attached is it quite blurry or clear?

My sim card, and I think the sim cards of many other people, does not support multiple entries under one name. Nor does it support the amount of contacts I have in my GMail. Actually, I don't even think it supports the amount of information that can be held in phone storage/online accounts (stuff like addresses, birthdays etc)

Cleargrey said:
My sim card, and I think the sim cards of many other people, does not support multiple entries under one name. Nor does it support the amount of contacts I have in my GMail. Actually, I don't even think it supports the amount of information that can be held in phone storage/online accounts (stuff like addresses, birthdays etc)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah i know, it has very limited functionality, .. but if you got a correct name and phone number in your phone book, than you can sync the rest from Gmail if am not mistaken, this might help in having multiple accounts and such

now this is odd. I'm finding that every test contact I put in the phone, is not getting updated online. More than that, when it syncs, it deletes the contact.
I just tried:
1a Testgeneralgoogle
1a Test
and a third one I can't remember.
They just seemed to replace the former, then get deleted altogether.
But when I added "1a Testonline" to my online account, it appears on my phone.
Am I really the only person who is having this behaviour on their phone??? Is it simply a setting I'm missing?
Can someone try to add a test contact on their phone and see if their GMail contacts are updated properly, please.
(P.S. I should mention that I updated the number of a contact from my Desire, which showed up online. Then I updated their birthday at a separate time which didn't show up online and was reset to the incorrect date I had online.)

I'm getting my phone next week and I have a couple of questions about the phonebook too:
1/ I listed all my current contacts in GMail. So when I enter my GMail address on the phone, will it add them right away?
2/ If I enter my Facebook details and want to browse Facebook pics through the photos app, is it also gonna import my FB contacts? (I don't want it to)
Thanks!

@Ghisy. 1. Yes. 2. Haven't tried it.
I'm getting somewhere with finding out about the syncing issues I'm having. At least a little step. I've just found out that if I create a contact on the phone, and put in a birthdate, it won't appear in my online contacts when the phone syncs and it will get deleted when the phone does update. If there is no birthday, it syncs fine.
Kinda.
I'm finding that businesses are 50:50 when it comes to syncing. Some businesses are even not in my onine account anywhere and yet they're on my phone. And I have no idea where they came from but they are businesses that I have stored their details in the past.
This is almost seeming like a GMail issue as the phone can't make up contacts that I coincidently have used before.
Again, people are welcome to try at least to change a birthday or sync a new contact with a birthday and share what happens. I'd like to go to HTC saying the sync is not working fully, and it's happening to more than just me. If it's true of course.

I also seem to have some trouble wrapping my head around the phonebook (it shouldn't be that difficult should it?) After having read around on the forums I went to my google account and spent a while typing in my contacts which have synced fine as far as I can see.
I've set it under People to show only gmail contacts (and not sim)...but when I hit the "Phone" on the homepage it still shows my sim contacts...any way in changing this to show only gmail contacts? I'm a bit OCD-ish when it comes to this stuff. I like everything nice and neat

From what I've seen on my own, when you go into People - Menu - View, you can select which set of contacts to view. On mine at least, this config works for when tapping Phone and I don't see the other contacts.
Another aparent issue, I've just realised that I don't think there is a way to copy a phone contact to the synced (in my case Google) account. And on top of that, contacts that are sent via vcard, are sent to the phone. You don't seem to get an option.
But as always, I'm still trying to learn so I'm up for someone telling me I'm wrong.

anyone got an idea how to get rid of all the facebook contact/numbers that come up using phone function ? cuz i dont have in my contacts most of the people i have on facebook so its slightly annoying having to scroll through all of them

Cleargrey said:
From what I've seen on my own, when you go into People - Menu - View, you can select which set of contacts to view. On mine at least, this config works for when tapping Phone and I don't see the other contacts.
Another aparent issue, I've just realised that I don't think there is a way to copy a phone contact to the synced (in my case Google) account. And on top of that, contacts that are sent via vcard, are sent to the phone. You don't seem to get an option.
But as always, I'm still trying to learn so I'm up for someone telling me I'm wrong.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I've changed my "People" view to show only google contacts. Just weird that when I go to "Phone" all my sim contacts still show as well as the google ones. I want to keep my contacts on my sim...just want to hide them from view. Hmm more investigating required...

When you ad a new contact, you have to select "contact type" -> "Google" instead of "Phone", if you want the contact to be synchronized with you google contacts.

Argh! This is really annoying me now though -
I've updated my google account with all my contacts from my sim.
The on the phone have gone to People --> Menu --> View --> Google contacts
And that lets me just see my Google contacts in people view (great)
BUT when I hit "Phone" it shows both sim AND google contacts - is there an extra setting that I'm unaware of in the "Phone" section of the phone?
All my previous phones had an option to show only sim or only phone contacts but just can't find it on the Desire...I want to try and avoid deleting the contacts off my sim as I'd like to have a back up.
The only way I can see myself out of this is by exporting onto the memory card and then manually deleting all my sim contacts...which seems a bit of a long way round it. Does anyone else have any other suggestions? Or indeed does anyone else have this same problem?
If it helps, I bought this from CPW PAYG and using my o2 simplicity sim in it.
Thanks!

Do yourself a favour,
Log into google on your pc, and go to contacts, and put ALL your contacts in there.
Then delete them off the phones sim.
It may sound long winded, but once you get the hang off everything being in the cloud, the phone works very well.
All my contacts now have pictures, birthdays, email address's etc on google.com.
And they all automatically appear in my phone, my calender syncs, all my contacts birthdays appear on my phones calender etc,
Fon22

Fon22 said:
Do yourself a favour,
Log into google on your pc, and go to contacts, and put ALL your contacts in there.
Then delete them off the phones sim.
It may sound long winded, but once you get the hang off everything being in the cloud, the phone works very well.
All my contacts now have pictures, birthdays, email address's etc on google.com.
And they all automatically appear in my phone, my calender syncs, all my contacts birthdays appear on my phones calender etc,
Fon22
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep I should just do that - just wanted to see if there were any other options before . I'm guessing that it works both ways - when i add contacts on my phone it'll sync with my google account and add them on there as well right?

Contact Photo Strangeness

I have my phone set up to link with Facebook profiles, but for some contacts I have chosen to use the phone picture instead of the Facebook one as the contact photo, this works fine for all my contacts set up like this except one, after a while the phone keeps changing back to using the Facebook photo on its own...
Anyone else seen this?
P.

Still have this problem after a hard reset, same contact, photo keeps being changed back to the facebook profile photo randomly after I've changed it to the one stored in the phone, seems to happen after a couple of hours each time, all other contacts where I have the phone photo rather than the fb one are fine.
Also, the "default action" for contacts (e.g. call mobile, landline etc.) seems to be frequently forgotten for contacts in general.
Anyone?
P.

If the contact is linked to their FB account I believe this takes priority over anything else. You'd have break the account link to use another picture

No, that's not the case, you can choose which picture you want to use, click on the word "linked" at the top of the contact's info then you can choose which info you want to use in "people"
There is a dropdown next to the photo where you choose and also next to the name (because sometimes the name in your phone and on fb aren't the same you can choose which you want displayed)
I use the phone photo in this way for around 10 contacts in preference to their fb one, and it works just fine, just not for this one contact, the setting never seems to "stick"
P.

Can't help you, I just use the FB ones. If I wanna use my own I remove the FB link

Still no solution?
I know it's an old thread but this thing is ridiculously annoying!! It is not related to FB linked contacts exclusively. It also happens with phone contacts that are linked to Google contacts. Their pictures change "sometimes" no matter if contact auto synch is enabled or not. And I haven't been able to define a pattern when this annoyance occurs.
I also think this could be something related to Google since my friend have the same problem with Samsung Galaxy S.
Does anyone have any information how to solve this without breaking the links?

[Q] Facebook picture overrides Google picture

I have a lot of my Google contacts synced with my Facebook account but I set them to show the Google picture rather than the Facebook picture. Some of them work fine and show the Google picture but some of them show the Google picture for awhile and then switch back to the Facebook picture, and it stays on the Facebook picture until I go and switch it again. And then it switches itself back to the Facebook picture 5 minutes later.
This really frustrates me and I haven't been able to figure out how to fix it. Anyone know what's wrong?

Facing the same prob....
Sent from my HTC Desire using XDA App

How do you switch between google photo and facebook photo for a linked account?

mouth said:
How do you switch between google photo and facebook photo for a linked account?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In the contact details tap the "linked" icon in the top right hand corner, then you can tap the contact photo itself and choose which one you want to use
as the OP states though, for some reason it doesn't always stick... for me it works for all contacts where I've done this (maybe 7 or 8) except one, which always switches back to the facebook photo...
P.

Ah!!! Good its not just me being an idiot then....i have this exact same issue!!!

only way to stop the pictures from changing is to switch off the facebook contact sync in account & sync settings.

sutepm said:
only way to stop the pictures from changing is to switch off the facebook contact sync in account & sync settings.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So it's just a bug in Android? Like popkid said, some of them stick with the Google picture, and some of them switch back to the Facebook picture. And it's usually the same ones, like the ones that stick to Google for awhile usually stick to Google forever, and the ones that are gonna switch back to Facebook will do it almost immediately.
One thing I tried is just unlinking those specific contacts from their Facebook accounts, but if they have their phone numbers in their Facebook profiles, now that the contacts are separated the Facebook contact will override the phone/Google contact and it will show the person's full name and Facebook pic, so it still doesn't help.

rpimps said:
So it's just a bug in Android? Like popkid said, some of them stick with the Google picture, and some of them switch back to the Facebook picture. And it's usually the same ones, like the ones that stick to Google for awhile usually stick to Google forever, and the ones that are gonna switch back to Facebook will do it almost immediately.
One thing I tried is just unlinking those specific contacts from their Facebook accounts, but if they have their phone numbers in their Facebook profiles, now that the contacts are separated the Facebook contact will override the phone/Google contact and it will show the person's full name and Facebook pic, so it still doesn't help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have the same problem as you are, I don't think it's a bug in Android but the Facebook sync itself. At the moment I just left the facebook contact sync off to stop the picture from being changed.

Look it's easy people.
Go to the contact. Choose link, choose desired photo, save and job done.
Took me a while to figure out too but the functionality is there.

sbdags said:
Look it's easy people.
Go to the contact. Choose link, choose desired photo, save and job done.
Took me a while to figure out too but the functionality is there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I said, that's exactly what I've been doing ...
1. I go to "link."
2. I click on the picture and choose the Google picture.
3. The picture changes to the Google picture.
4. A couple of minutes (or sometimes a couple of hours) later, the picture changes itself back to the Facebook picture.

Distorted Contacts Pics

I'm not sure if this topic has been covered in any previous threads because if it was, I can't find it.
The problem I'm having is when I assign a picture to a contact, it becomes distorted after about 30 minutes (or however long you set your contacts to sync).
Before that 30 minutes, the picture is as clean and crisp as the original.
I tested this with my girlfriends picture. I assigned a picture to her number and had her call me right away. Her pic came up sharp and crisp like the original. 30 min later I had her call me again and it was extremely blurry/compressed.
One thing I did notice is that the phone created a "Profile Pics" section under her number when I tried to change the pic again. And in that section is the picture that I had assigned to her all blurry and compressed. So the phone compresses the image after a while and then automatically uses the compressed image from that point forward.
I've searched the internet and XDA and have found no solution to this problem. No one has even brought it up before.
Does anyone know how to fix this? Is there even a fix?
Any feedback is appreciated!

Nissan350 said:
I'm not sure if this topic has been covered in any previous threads because if it was, I can't find it.
The problem I'm having is when I assign a picture to a contact, it becomes distorted after about 30 minutes (or however long you set your contacts to sync).
Before that 30 minutes, the picture is as clean and crisp as the original.
I tested this with my girlfriends picture. I assigned a picture to her number and had her call me right away. Her pic came up sharp and crisp like the original. 30 min later I had her call me again and it was extremely blurry/compressed.
One thing I did notice is that the phone created a "Profile Pics" section under her number when I tried to change the pic again. And in that section is the picture that I had assigned to her all blurry and compressed. So the phone compresses the image after a while and then automatically uses the compressed image from that point forward.
I've searched the internet and XDA and have found no solution to this problem. No one has even brought it up before.
Does anyone know how to fix this? Is there even a fix?
Any feedback is appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As you mentioned this has been discussed here before and there is no fix for it.
What happens is when you assign a pic for your girl and than she calls you immediately the pic you assigned is being showed.
But once your phone gets synced "it would be with either your hotmail or your gmail" than the exchange there resizes the image to the max it supports which is actually very small and hence the issue.,
One work around I have seen is if you are having facebook and your contact is linked to a fb contact the fb profile pic is shown and it comes a lot better
Hope this helps

Nissan350 said:
I tested this with my girlfriends picture. I assigned a picture to her number and had her call me right away. Her pic came up sharp and crisp like the original. 30 min later I had her call me again and it was extremely blurry/compressed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How many beers did you consume between assigning the picture and recieving her call? That might contribute to the blurry image.

I solved this
I used to have that problem, not anymore .
The pictures become distorted when they sync with Gmail so I copied all my contacts over to Hotmail and unchecked the "Sync Gmail Contacts" option.
The issue isn't repeating itself with just Hotmail syncing contacts so it's definitely something to do with Gmail.

Guys, thanks for all the feedback! I really appreciate it. I might have had a few beers but I don't think that had anything to do with it (maybe) lol
Hmmm.. I will try the Hotmail method. How did you manage to copy all the contacts over? Did you do it manually? Or is there an option to copy contacts from another account?
Thanks!!!
EDIT: Nevermind. I found out how to import them. Hotmail makes it a synch!
I'll get back to you guys on if it works
EDIT 2: Ok, I transferred everything over to Hotmail. I go into Windows Live settings in the phone and there's only an option to sync E-mail. No option for contacts? This means that only E-mails have synced. No numbers. Any ideas?
Edit 3: Sorry for all the edits. I've messed around a bit with this. What I've found is that you have to leave Gmail contacts to sync. Then you have to sync Hotmail contacts right after. You will then have duplicates of all your contacts. You now have to select the Hotmail contact (the one without the persons number) and assign it a picture. After that you have to go back and link corresponding Hotmail and Gmail contacts via the link button on the phone. WP7 uses the Hotmail contact picture over the Gmail contact picture.
I've tested this by re-syncing Gmail and Hotmail, had my friend call me, and his picture came up crisp, even after the re-syncing. The only downside to this method (if you want to call it one) is that on the main screen, the people live tile does not display any contact pictures. Instead you get a bunch of blank boxes.
Let me know what you guys think!

I'm not sure why you made it so complicated, this is was I did:
1. Copied contacts to Hotmail (via PC, not phone)
2. Unchecked the "Sync contacts" option in Gmail
3. Synched Gmail account so it would remove all contacts from the phone
4. Synched Live account so it would add all contacts to the phone
5. Assigned pictures to contacts
I have no duplicate, no distorted picture and the People tile shows pictures, not blank squares. Five easy steps really.

Peew971 said:
I'm not sure why you made it so complicated, this is was I did:
1. Copied contacts to Hotmail (via PC, not phone)
2. Unchecked the "Sync contacts" option in Gmail
3. Synched Gmail account so it would remove all contacts from the phone
4. Synched Live account so it would add all contacts to the phone
5. Assigned pictures to contacts
I have no duplicate, no distorted picture and the People tile shows pictures, not blank squares. Five easy steps really.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tried your method but for some reason, when I unticked the sync Gmail contacts and re-synced Gmail to remove the contacts, I then synced Hotmail but Hotmail only syncs the contacts name and maybe an E-mail if there is one assigned to them. It never synced their numbers. So there I was with a bunch of blank contacts. Not sure why you never ran into this problem. In Live sync settings there is only the option to sync E-mail. No option for contacts. Which is what I said in edit 2. BUT when I go to check my contact info via PC, there are numbers for every contact. The phone, for some reason, syncs everything but their number.

Ok I see... That's quite weird I never got that problem indeed.

you can try syncing your contacts to soocial.com, then switching them over. I use soocial to sync all my contacts, and it edits my hotmail contacts for me. I am through letting emails sync my stuff. Each has a different format and something always gets screwed up.

Yeah weird indeed. Well on the bright side, we now know of 2 different methods for fixing this problem.
Whats soocial.com? Is that something that WP7 can sync like Gmail and Hotmail?

Nissan350 said:
Yeah weird indeed. Well on the bright side, we now know of 2 different methods for fixing this problem.
Whats soocial.com? Is that something that WP7 can sync like Gmail and Hotmail?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
they don't have a wp7 app yet, but they are a contacts sync service, that you can use instead of an email acct on ios, android, winmo...
For wp7, I sync my hotmail, which is tied to my soocial acct, which then updates my gmail, yahoo, etc. That way, changing a contact on 1 acct, changes them all.

Few frustrations / questions about the way S3 handles contacts

Few items I wanted to share about the way Galaxy S3 handles contacts which I don’t fully grasp. My earlier phone did not have any of those problems (Nexus S) which I accidently dropped in the pool and as a result I ended up buying the S3. My Nexus S still does not power up. I am also to this forum so please go easy on me…. Here is my list or frustrations:
1. Pictures look tiny and small:
Why use small and low resolution to show pictures? There is enough empty space when displaying a contact.
2. Facebook and LinkedIn always syncs entire contact network:
I cannot seem to understand how the contacts sync works. Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are always synced fully – selecting option “sync only with existing contacts” does nothing as I still end up with an address book full of people I don’t want on my phone. It always syncs entire Facebook and LinkedIn contact networks.
3. Twitter does not sync at all.
What happened here, does anyone know? Is twitter removed from supported apps?
4. Duplicated records:
When I turn on the sync I ended up with multiple duplicates. What does “join contacts” mean exactly?
5. Unable to hide certain “groups” / accounts
Is there a way to hide contact on my SIM card? My good old nexus S had the ability to only display groups I wanted on the phone and this one completely disregarded that option.
6. Reject call list
Reject list is the only part I like about S3’s contact management.
7. Copy / edit contact’s pictures
Is there a way to copy / move pictures from Facebook or LinkedIn to Google address book?
Thanks,

yeah i have the same issues with the facebook app syncing. when i click sync only contacts, it syncs all, and also does not sync the pictures. hmm