Database Develop

I want to root but have questions first!

Currently, I keep getting force close errors when sending messages and creating or editing contacts, I really want to fix this so I thought I might as well try and root my phone at the same time.
Here are my questions:
1. Should I fix these force close errors before I root my phone. If so, how?
2. Does rooting my G1 mean I'll lose my messages, contacts, etc?
3. Is there anyway I can save my messages, contacts, etc before I root my phone and reinstate them afterwards? (If they are lost in the process).
I hope my questions aren't too stupid!
Thanks!

Giggity giggity...... don't bother fixing the fc's, they would be fixed in the process. You will lose messages, call log, browser bookmarks, internal save apps, almost everything on your phone when you wipe it. Your contacts are synced with gmail and will auto restore, any apps you purchased will be availible for redownload in my downloads in the market, they are also linked to your gmail. Back-up wise, the only programs that I know back-up on root only or you have to pay for use. So you are **** out of luck there

Gridlock pretty much said it all. But I will add one thing tho, there are apps that will allow you to back up your sms first without root. Just go to the market and look up "backup" and you will see a bunch of apps that you might want.

If you are having FC while sending messages my personal opinion would be to not backup and restore anything that has to do with those messages. Just imo.
Make sure you have data sync turned on and you do a manual sync before you root to ensure you have an up-to-date backup of your contacts.
Menu > Settings > Data Sync > Menu button > Sync Now

Thanks for the answers guys. I've come across another damn problem now that I've been trying to back up my contacts. I have a bunch of numbers on my phone that appear to not be in any 'sync group'...I select all contacts in sync group and then make my contacts sync. I check my g-mail account and its just got all my e-mail addresses but not my phone numbers. When I sync My Contacts it sends only a few numbers. I can view "Contacts With Numbers" but I cant seem to sync them.
Also, when I select 'all contacts' to sync I get that damn red exclaimation mark.
In an attempt to sort this, I selected all my e-mail contacts in 'All Contacts' and sent them to a new group called 'E-mail'. Then I selected to delete 'All Contacts' expecting to retain them in my new 'E-mail' group and it deleted ALL my bloody contacts including 'My Contacts'. I've now lost the few numbers under 'My Contacts' (even on my phone somehow...) and all my damn E-mails!
Can someone please tell me how the hell I can sync "Contacts with numbers" onto my g-mail so I can root my ****ing phone!!!

Are the contacts you lost still on your gmail account if so it will prob just resync them and you still have your contacts on your sim card also well just the ones you had before you started using this phone. The most I ever backup is my app data, bookmarks always give me a fc on the browser when I restore. I don't worry bout contacts though since gmail handles that

Well this is my problem. My g-mail had none of my contacts! When I got this phone it was a fresh sim card with nothing on. I put all my numbers in by hand. My numbers were last (fully) synced on 27th Jan 09. Everytime I sync, I get My Contacts only. All the other numbers fail to sync, I'm guessing because they're not in any group. Even if I select all numbers to sync they don't go to my G-Mail. I had about 15 number sync in My Contacts (before I deleted the buggers). Now I'll have to get those back.
I need a way of putting all my numbers that aren't in My Contacts, into My Contacts to Google will sync them! I'm guessing this is because they were put into my phone because the update where Google made all newly entered numbers go into My Contacts...Hmm

Right, I've sorted it.
Downloaded an app from the the market place called ExportContacts. Worked like a treat. It wrote all my contacts to a .csv. Simply imported them on G-Mail. Added them to contacts, deleted all of them on my phone and re-synced. AT LAST I CAN ROOT!

Giggity said:
Right, I've sorted it.
Downloaded an app from the the market place called ExportContacts. Worked like a treat. It wrote all my contacts to a .csv. Simply imported them on G-Mail. Added them to contacts, deleted all of them on my phone and re-synced. AT LAST I CAN ROOT!
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woot glad you got it to work and this is good info for general use as well

how to retain contacts when upgrading from donut to cyanogen

is there a way that I can backup my contacts?

cyansheep said:
is there a way that I can backup my contacts?
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Backup for root users in the app market check contacts and when u do the new rom go to the app and hit restore then reboot

nick8197 said:
Backup for root users in the app market check contacts and when u do the new rom go to the app and hit restore then reboot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
or sync to your google account or save to sim card

cyansheep said:
is there a way that I can backup my contacts?
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Click to collapse
when u sync, ur contacts are saved on ur gmail account. So when u sign in again after installing the rom, it should synced back to ur phone.
well at least thats what i did and my contacts are back and fine.

Dude, seriously? Two threads? Why don't you search, then try Q&A thread. Both are your friends.

OP: Please stop making threads like this in the Dev forum.
Use Google Sync.

how long did you have a g1? let alone a google account. if you didnt know there was a contact sync. wow.

#1- Google sync wont work for me because I only want to restore my phone contacts not the 500 contacts I have in gmail.
#2-Rooted backup wont workin because I will need to back this up BEFORE I root my phone.
Im using mybackup pro.
Most open source communities encourage questions. Ill go find a real one.

Well give us all the information first. Sim backup will backup the contacts to the sim card, then just restore the sim contacts when you flash.
Yes, we encourage questions in the q&a section, with all useful information -- not half.

cyansheep said:
is there a way that I can backup my contacts?
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Click to collapse
Unless you've disabled contact sync, all your contacts have been backed up to google's servers, and next time you sign in with your google account info they will be restored. This also means if your phone is lost or stolen you can still access your contacts from the Gmail web interface. Seriously, push contacts are the best thing since sliced bread.

cyansheep said:
Most open source communities encourage questions. Ill go find a real one.
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they also encourage having the ability to be able to find the solutions to the most basic questions by yourself.

Titanium Backup is scary, how do I work it?

What do I WANT it for, exactly?
Secondly, I just want to backup my contacts because Google Sync won't Sync my contact photos. I want my contact photos to save. Do I... backup the contact app?

Tibo is for flash junkies who like to flash roms like crazy It basicly restores your apps without loosing any data. My google sync works fine It saves Pictures with contacts.
I personally don't like to backup becouse for some reason when you update those aps that were restore dont work or it downloads and hangs. But to each its own.

chibixzero said:
Tibo is for flash junkies who like to flash roms like crazy It basicly restores your apps without loosing any data. My google sync works fine It saves Pictures with contacts.
I personally don't like to backup becouse for some reason when you update those aps that were restore dont work or it downloads and hangs. But to each its own.
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Click to collapse
I just want my contact pictures to save to my contacts, and for my contacts to be saved to Google.

To backup your contacts to your phone you could just click menu from the contact list and select export.
To backup them with google you just have to select the option Sync Contacts under Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> your gmail account
it is usually selected by default though...
after that, wait for it to sync and check your google account from your computer and go to contacts to check if they are there
the pics are backed up as well; they will not show on the contact list on your gmail account, but click on a contact and it will show you the picture
just as easy as that, if you flash/change/etc your phone, when you put your google account afterwards it will download all your contacts with their pics from google

rastanthology said:
To backup your contacts to your phone you could just click menu from the contact list and select export.
To backup them with google you just have to select the option Sync Contacts under Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> your gmail account
it is usually selected by default though...
after that, wait for it to sync and check your google account from your computer and go to contacts to check if they are there
the pics are backed up as well; they will not show on the contact list on your gmail account, but click on a contact and it will show you the picture
just as easy as that, if you flash/change/etc your phone, when you put your google account afterwards it will download all your contacts with their pics from google
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's never synced with my account. Never.

I have a video for this please check out my thread...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=877652

From what I can tell google does not sync a contact if it dies not have and email address. If I am wrong can someone tell me how to do it/ I have created contacts under google on my phone that do not have emails and they do not show up in my Google contacts on my computer. Google does not sync any of your "Phone contacts", at least not on my phone

Try going into Settings -> Accounts & Sync -> your gmail account again and this time press the menu button and click Sync Now.

Thanks! I tried but it did not work.

Something is wrong with your phone. On mine, every contact entry that I made on the phone shows up on my gmail contact list. Some don't have email addresses at all.

you could also try to make a backup by exporting the contacts, flash a new rom and try to sync again
are you on stock or on a custom rom?

visitador02 said:
Something is wrong with your phone. On mine, every contact entry that I made on the phone shows up on my gmail contact list. Some don't have email addresses at all.
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Are your contacts saved to your phone or Google. My Google contacts sync, phone contacts do not. Google contacts without email don't sync either.

LBCaptivate said:
Are your contacts saved to your phone or Google. My Google contacts sync, phone contacts do not. Google contacts without email don't sync either.
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Click to collapse
I am confused. Why would I need Google Contacts to Sync?
I have no Google Contacts. I copied all my SIM Contacts to my Phone. From there on out, how to make them Google Contacts, I'm at a loss.

I don't need my Google contacts to sync since they sync fine. It is the contacts that are saved to my phone that will not sync to google. I do not want to backup my contacts to the sim card since some of them have multiple #s. When you backup to the sim card each phone number under one contact is saved as an individual contact giving you multiple entries for one contact. My phone is still stock. I did a master reset to see if it would help with the shutdown issue, which by the way, did not help. It just created problems with all my contacts. Some were lost and others now have the wrong numbers associated with them. The only contacts that stayed the same were the Google contacts. The phone contacts were all messed up. I plan on getting the phone replaced under warranty and don't want to go through the headache of having to redo all the phone contacts again.
Just looking for a way to completely backup a stock phone. AT&T address book is useless now because of the JH7 update.

[Q] How to restore joined contacts?

Hi all..
I've tried searching for answers to my question for ages and its a no-go so i'm posting it here.
So here's my problem. My contacts are synced on google (not phone or sim) and their names are not the same as in facebook. When I sign in to facebook, as usual we're given 3 choices:
- Sync All
- Sync with existing contacts
- Remove facebook data
If i choose the 2nd (sync with existing contacts), only a few gets synced as not all of my contact's names are the same on my phone and on facebook. So i choose Sync All, and then manually join the contacts.
I'm on Darky's 10.2, and on TiBu what system app should I backup the data so the contacts i joined manually are retained when I flash a new rom with a full wipe? If i just flash a new rom everything disappears even after i've signed in to google and synced all my contacts. All their pictures are gone.
BTW I dont use the samsung's built in SNS account and have even deleted them off my phone.
Should I backup the contacts application? I've been trying many things and all dont seem to work. I just dont know which system app data to backup.. Its a pain to rejoin each and every contact after every reflash (which I do a lot)
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Titanium backup. It might be the greatest app for android. I have backed up with titanium then a full reset and full wipe flash then restore with titanium and it is as if nothing even happened. I have ran in to the issue with using a different Rom then the backup and restoring the system data can screw things up. So I just go into titanium and choose only my contacts, wifi and Bluetooth parings.
Sent from my SGH-I897

suresh13 said:
Hi all..
I've tried searching for answers to my question for ages and its a no-go so i'm posting it here.
So here's my problem. My contacts are synced on google (not phone or sim) and their names are not the same as in facebook. When I sign in to facebook, as usual we're given 3 choices:
- Sync All
- Sync with existing contacts
- Remove facebook data
If i choose the 2nd (sync with existing contacts), only a few gets synced as not all of my contact's names are the same on my phone and on facebook. So i choose Sync All, and then manually join the contacts.
I'm on Darky's 10.2, and on TiBu what system app should I backup the data so the contacts i joined manually are retained when I flash a new rom with a full wipe? If i just flash a new rom everything disappears even after i've signed in to google and synced all my contacts. All their pictures are gone.
BTW I dont use the samsung's built in SNS account and have even deleted them off my phone.
Should I backup the contacts application? I've been trying many things and all dont seem to work. I just dont know which system app data to backup.. Its a pain to rejoin each and every contact after every reflash (which I do a lot)
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know exactly what you're talking about, did you find a solution for that?

rmetanes said:
I know exactly what you're talking about, did you find a solution for that?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You've quoted a over year hold post, chances are that you won't be getting a answer from him eh.
Restoring a system app is ALWAYS a bad idea, so don't go for that option. I never looked for a option myself but there should be a way to manually backup your current contacts (with pictures and everything) to google.

Empty Duplicated Contacts Read Only?

Ok I've done some digging and can't seem to find anything with my exact problem.
Yes I have looked up duplicated read only contacts BUT everyone seems to have this issue with contacts synced from another app. Mine is no.
Got this baby this past Sunday (found out that I can upgrade 7 days early so of course I did it. Love the phone and think I will be okay without root. Got Helium backup to backup my data. Only thing left is for them to add a Restart in the power menu then I'll be fine with no Root. OH and they need to get Lolipop out ASAP)
But ever since then I've been having this issue. I've been having new contacts made, same name as a contact I have, but with not info (most of the time. Sometimes it has their number in it). Now here is where it gets weird.
They are Google contacts that it says are saved under my Gmail. I go to Gmail, No duplicated contacts there, I try to delete, says they are read only and can only hide, AND it seems like the contacts that are getting duplicated are contacts that I seem to call most often. I have all other apps and their contact sync turned off so I know it's not an issue with them, and since they are saved under Gmail and when I turn off the local Phone contacts they are still there so I know they are not local saved/SIM contacts.
If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I felt like I had this issue loooooong ago with another phone but pretty sure it was back when Facebook synced its contacts and I had to link them.
I'm a savvy guy and know my way around Android.
Thanks

Ok well i ended up getting it myself.
For people with this issue:
Turn off google contact sync. Then go to apps in settings and then look for the contact storage app. Force stoo the act and clean all data. Check contacts to make sure its empty. Then enable google contacts sync.
Sent from my XT1254 using XDA Free mobile app

Contacts in Android are stored in a database, and as they come from multiple sources (synced from Google, Facebook, Whatsapp, LinkedIn and copied from SIM or stored as "local phone" contacts...) it's easy to have multiple instances of same contact with different info or even duplicates. Contacts app let you "join" multiple contacts from different sources so they will appear joined in your contacts list, but they will still be stored inidividually in the database.
Anyway, there are multiple apps that let you manage your contacts at a deeper database level. With MiniContacts https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brapeba.minicontacts you can see all raw contacts one by one showing its original account source (group). And you can delete all contacts from a source (i.e. those coming from LinkedIn, or Facebook) or choosing manually those you don't want. Notice that if you don't disable the syncronization with the source those deleted contacts will reappear again. So, first disable syncronization! If you want to delete the contacts permanently from everywhere instead of just from your Android database, go to the source (LinkedIn, Facebook...) and delete them there.
Hope it helps...
drtweak said:
Ok I've done some digging and can't seem to find anything with my exact problem.
Yes I have looked up duplicated read only contacts BUT everyone seems to have this issue with contacts synced from another app. Mine is no.
Got this baby this past Sunday (found out that I can upgrade 7 days early so of course I did it. Love the phone and think I will be okay without root. Got Helium backup to backup my data. Only thing left is for them to add a Restart in the power menu then I'll be fine with no Root. OH and they need to get Lolipop out ASAP)
But ever since then I've been having this issue. I've been having new contacts made, same name as a contact I have, but with not info (most of the time. Sometimes it has their number in it). Now here is where it gets weird.
They are Google contacts that it says are saved under my Gmail. I go to Gmail, No duplicated contacts there, I try to delete, says they are read only and can only hide, AND it seems like the contacts that are getting duplicated are contacts that I seem to call most often. I have all other apps and their contact sync turned off so I know it's not an issue with them, and since they are saved under Gmail and when I turn off the local Phone contacts they are still there so I know they are not local saved/SIM contacts.
If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I felt like I had this issue loooooong ago with another phone but pretty sure it was back when Facebook synced its contacts and I had to link them.
I'm a savvy guy and know my way around Android.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Thanks for the reply but it is making blank contacts with theur name and storing then as phone contacts. Google is the only source i sync any contacts from but ill give this a try
Sent from my XT1254 using XDA Free mobile app

Thanks for the tip, @drtweak! This was driving me nuts and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Good work...

Thanks!
drtweak said:
Ok well i ended up getting it myself.
For people with this issue:
Turn off google contact sync. Then go to apps in settings and then look for the contact storage app. Force stoo the act and clean all data. Check contacts to make sure its empty. Then enable google contacts sync.
Sent from my XT1254 using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I could kiss you right now. I have been scouring the internet and downloading apps for hours trying to figure out how to fix "read only" and "can't be deleted" contacts on my second replacement dud Turbo 2. Duplicates galore, and they wouldn't go away. Thank you, thank you, thank you! :laugh: No more Verizon Cloud - that really messed it up both times. Merry Christmas! :good:

Christina729 said:
I could kiss you right now. I have been scouring the internet and downloading apps for hours trying to figure out how to fix "read only" and "can't be deleted" contacts on my second replacement dud Turbo 2. Duplicates galore, and they wouldn't go away. Thank you, thank you, thank you! :laugh: No more Verizon Cloud - that really messed it up both times. Merry Christmas! :good:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The app Simpler Contacts can merge duplicate apps. I've used it on friends' phones to do that.
Of course, Simpler Contacts also would like you to keep using their app and even their backup service, and they have a Dialer app too. But you don't need all that. I just use Simpler Contacts once in a while to check for duplicate contacts.
But this solution above is good too.
I also used Simpler Contacts to export all contacts from a "local" account. Helped to friends do this when they switched from iPhone to Android and the carrier store exported all their iPhone apps to "local" phone account -- which is STUPID. All the contacts need to synced with Google.