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Hi Everyone
I really liked how in 1.5 one could chose which of their gmail contact groups they wanted to have synced to the phone. Now let me take a min to explain what I am talking about because I think when I say this I have confused people in other thread topics when asking about it. Using the web interface of gmail I have created a couple of groups (phone family, phone friends, etc). I created these groups because I did not want all 500 of my of my gmail contacts on my phone. Creating these groups allowed me to specifically choose which contacts would be synched from the web to my phone and keep them organized based on how I know them. Now in 2.1 this was taken away and replaced by a sync all contacts approach (this was already aval in 1.5 so I don't know why they would chose to take out the group syncing ability). I know there are ways to limit which contacts appear in people by going to view and then choosing no phone number this is not enough control for me because my contact list/people app on the phone is still over loaded with contacts.
Are there any 2.1 roms that emulate the syncing options that were available in 1.5?
Thank You
There isn't. Only 1.5 has that option
That really SUCKS!!!! I could have sowrn that I read in one of the threads here that at least one rom did support that functionality but I have tried it and it has been a no go :-(
Is it a HTC thing or is it an android thing? By that I mean does 2.1 just make that impossible to do or is it something that if I or someone else wanted to to make a custom rom could add in or bring that functionality back?
I agree that this sucks that this option was taken away. I have asked a few different places about this option and have got no response.
I figured it out...
Hey everyone
I can't believe it I figured it out :-D I am feeling super happy I am one step closer to bringing full functionality back to my phone :-D
I haven't duplicated it on anyone else's phone so not sure if it is a fluke or what. Also only have it working in the custom rom I am using (ALOYSIUS 2.1)
If you want to know what I did pm me and I'll let you know.
you could just, you know, tell us in this thread so everyone doesn't have to PM you
This thread will most likely be moved to the hero general forum....but I just got his PM on how he got it to work.....
dsMA said:
Here is how I got it to work. I went to settings; accounts & sync; I have background data, auto-sync, and google, email checked.
You then exit out of settings and open contacts. Go to the contacts tab, menu, display options, click on gmail account, now a list of all your gmail groups should appear, check the ones you want to sync. Click done to save changes. Now the contacts tab should be populated by all the people in those groups you have selected. And now when you go to people it should be populated by only those groups that were checked in contacts. (i didnt change any settings in people, clicking menu, view, the only things checked are phone and google)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
interesting. i wonder if the same technique would work with a facebook group? i don't want all those people in my phone haha
I agree I don't really need all my facebook friends in my addressbook. In fact when you go to people -> view -> I leave facebook unchecked so none of them do. So if you would rather none of your facebook friends show up in the people app that is the way to do it.
Now it would be cool though if you could do something similar with facebook contacts that you could do with gmail contacts; I personally don't know. I suspect you might be able to filter the facebook contacts and sync/display by groups provided that facebook allows you to create groups of contacts but I don't know if they do.
Contacts in Phone App not necessarily People App....
I have 4200 contacts. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want this solved.
While testing the Andriod App and Google Contacts I realized a couple of things.
In Google Contacts selecting ALL Contacts I could REMOVE them from MY CONTACTS under GROUPS.
If you look to the left hand side column you will see MY CONTACTS now has ZERO contacts in it and ALL CONTACTS has all your contacts.
Then I selected ALL CONTACTS in the left hand side column. The I selected only the contacts I wanted to be in MY CONTACTS. When you click on a CONTACT you now have an option next to GROUPS at the top that say MOVE TO MY CONTACTS.
The great thing about this is under the PEOPLE APP only MY CONTACTS and the GROUPS I have created show up in the PEOPLE APP.
This is what I hoped would happen.
What happened in addition to this you ask?
Now when I go into the PHONE APP I click on MENU then PEOPLE and voila! Only the selected contacts come up. Perfect so far right?
Wrong. From the HOME screen I press the TALK BUTTON. When I start scrolling through the HISTORY of the calls and I arrive at the last HISTORY call I see that the 1st CONTACT of my 4200 contacts shows up. Then I scroll on down and realize that all 4200 contacts ARE THERE!!!!
So it is not only the PEOPLE APP that needs work but ALSO the PHONE APP. In my opinion.
Am I missing something?
So my question is now how do I tell the phone app to only sync whats in PEOPLE APP and not request ALL CONTACTS?
Any thoughts? Ive only worked and researched this for about 5 hours. So I am probably missing something.
Thank you for your help.
David
Build: Damage Control v2.09.01
Firmware: 2.1-update1
Baseband: 2.42.01.04.27
Kernal: 2.6.29-bc0d2cf
The Fix
For people who stumble upon this thread and need an answer let me share my experiences.
In version 1.5 of the OS HTC allowed us to pick which contact groups we wanted to sync to our phones from our gmail accounts. Enter 2.1, now we no longer have that granulated control, we are forced to sync all of our gmail contacts. After talking with HTC they told me that this is not a result of a change in their contact app (people) but rather a change google made to the android os.
I will now talk about some of the display options provided by people:
launch people - click menu (physical phone button) - click view
As it relates to google here if you want to sync your google contacts you must check the google box. Unfortunately as I stated above this syncs all google contacts. HTC does allow you some limited control over which contacts are actually displayed in your contact list though sadly the controls are not all that great. The only real useful option is at the top "show only contacts with phone numbers". This will only display those contacts which you have a stored phone number for. This option applies globally so if you have your phone tied to flicker, facebook, and twitter then also only contacts with phone numbers present will be displayed. There is a setting under Google that says "show auto gmail contacts" this will display those contacts that are set to show up in your gchat.
How to fix the problem.
Simple answer is that you are going to need to have the AOSP contacts app on your phone. The easiest way to do this is find a rom that includes it. This is actually easier said then done if you want to keep sense on your phone. Everyone has their opinion of sense, either you like it or you don't; personally I like it. The only rom that has both that I am aware of is Alyosius. I find it to be a good rom with both oc and non oc versions aval. If you have a rom that has the aosp contacts app here is what you do:
1. launch the contacts app (contacts)
2. menu (physical phone button)
3. display options
you will now be provided with the various accounts your phone syncs to
click on your gmail account
a set of sub options should now show up, after scrolling through the suboptions you will notice that all your gmail contact groups are shown.
4. check which ever groups you want displayed
Note: this does not prevent your phone from syncing all your contacts, there does not seem to be a way to prevent your phone from syncing all your gmail contacts. this simply makes managing the contacts that show up on your phone more manageable. This trick will limit the contacts that show up in the contact/people app to just those whose groups you have checked.
Note: when preforming a search view the search app or search button it is still possible to search for contacts that are not displayed i.e. since all groups are synced no matter what you will get search hits on those contacts same goes for when using the dialer.
If the rom you use does not have AOSP contacts I would contact the rom developer and see if it is possible to install the AOSP contacts app on your own and see if they can help you.
I hope this is helpful to people.
Hello, I'm a new owner (less than a week) of the Captivate and a newbie for android except for messing with the Backflip for a couple weeks. All of your guides have been great and I've been tweaking the heck of my captivate. I've even recovered from a near-bricking... scary but satisfying when I breathed life back into the phone. Currently I've got it rooted, OCed, new interface, etc.
However there's one aspect I'd really like to change that's bothering me. As you can guess from my subject it's the contact handling. I haven't seen any threads addressing it and hope someone can either help or point me towards a solution.
In a nutshell, contact handling is horrible. It makes me appreciate motoblur on the backflip... and I hate going backwards. I can't sync my google contact groups and the current implementation is acting strangely. I have it set up to only sync and ONLY display google contacts yet I'm getting an abbreviated list on the contacts tab. There's a lot of contacts that will only display if I click Groups->google. I have no idea why.
Are there any mods that will improve the display of contacts and handle the managing and syncing of google contact groups? Also, what folders will it sync if I enable contact sync with my exchange server? Will disabling sync remove the contacts if I don't like how they're being displayed?
Thanks.
I agree. The stock Contact app on this phone is garbage. The google groups are completely hosed on this app. No individual ringtones can be assigned unless you also create duplicates as phone contacts and then link them together. That is completely brain dead. Even if you do that, you still can't view the google group assigments. They are there, you just can't see them. Try to create a new group with the same name as one of your google groups that doesn't show. It will say it can't create it because it already exists. I'll say it again, the Contacts app on the Captivate is garbage. I haven't been able to find a replacement for it either. Anybody have some suggestions?
The closest thing I can find is an app called GroupU. It presents all of your google groups and changes made through it sync back to your google contacts. However it not integrated into he OS so it's a bit awkward to use.
Still looking for other options. Are there any phones out there that have better contact/google integration? If so, would it be possible to, say, backup that phones contacts.apk and restore it to the captivate? I don't think this would be possible (though I'd definitely try it if I had a different android phone) but I'm still knew to this and haven't gotten down to code level yet.
Anybody else have other options?
Raleran said:
In a nutshell, contact handling is horrible. It makes me appreciate motoblur on the backflip... and I hate going backwards. I can't sync my google contact groups and the current implementation is acting strangely. I have it set up to only sync and ONLY display google contacts yet I'm getting an abbreviated list on the contacts tab. There's a lot of contacts that will only display if I click Groups->google. I have no idea why.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Two things I can think of in response that might answer some of your questions/issues.
You are obviously aware that you can display contacts from a specific location as you described like "google contacts." For some reason the contacts app has default settings for certain apps. For example; only display contacts with phone number when you are in the dialer or only display contacts with email addresses when in the email app. I have noticed that this weird auto filtering has a tendency to block the contacts I want at the wrong time. I would try checking the filters and make sure its not just hiding what you want to see.
Secondly, I was annoyed with the poor handling of contact groups by the captivate. It seems that the phone will not sync the group placement of the contacts with gmail. From the reading I did, it seems this is a known issue and is being addressed. Google recently made changes to the contacts section online and I am assuming that we will see a change on next months update.
I hope this answers some questions. I have not tried any 3rd party contacts managers so I don't have a replacement suggestion. I got my filters straight and I don't mind waiting for a "groups" fix.
This is my wife's biggest gripe with her phone as well. The groups come through weird, and when she links two contacts together we can't seem to figure out how to set one as the default, so several contacts are showing up in her list as their Twitter username instead of their actual name.
Also, no assigning personalized ringtones for Google contacts? Seriously? Vanilla 2.1 and 2.2 don't have this problem.
I can't wait for somebody to write a vanilla ROM for the Captivate and get completely rid of touchwiz.
Another brain-dead feature of contact groups: if you do "send message" to a group, you're presented with a list of all the contacts in the group. None of the contacts in the group are selected, and there's no "select all" option; you have to go through and tap every member of the group.
Shovelhead84 said:
You are obviously aware that you can display contacts from a specific location as you described like "google contacts." For some reason the contacts app has default settings for certain apps. For example; only display contacts with phone number when you are in the dialer or only display contacts with email addresses when in the email app. I have noticed that this weird auto filtering has a tendency to block the contacts I want at the wrong time. I would try checking the filters and make sure its not just hiding what you want to see.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm having this trouble with the default contact app. If I go to the "desktop" and start contacts I get a different listing on the contact tab then the groups->google tab. I've made sure that only google contacts are displaying (unselected google and made sure the contacts tab was blank). I don't see any filters except for the "only display contacts with phone numbers". Are there any others hidden somewhere?
Shovelhead84 said:
Secondly, I was annoyed with the poor handling of contact groups by the captivate. It seems that the phone will not sync the group placement of the contacts with gmail. From the reading I did, it seems this is a known issue and is being addressed. Google recently made changes to the contacts section online and I am assuming that we will see a change on next months update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think that the groups are carried to the phone and they're synced in the background. I think that Touchwiz contacts just doesn't display them. Here's why I believe this... GroupU says in their description "Contacts GroupU integrates with built-in phonebook seamlessly." When I loaded it, it knew my labels I had set up in google contacts AND when I changed the assignment it synced back to my desktop.
I haven't seen anything on next months update... do you mean 2.2 will be released then?
Kiserai said:
Also, no assigning personalized ringtones for Google contacts? Seriously? Vanilla 2.1 and 2.2 don't have this problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Here's the strange thing... I know someone with the original droid and they can't access groups either. Go figure.
I've never seen a vanilla ROM for android... so I have absolutely no clue what it looks like.
Raleran said:
I'm having this trouble with the default contact app. If I go to the "desktop" and start contacts I get a different listing on the contact tab then the groups->google tab. I've made sure that only google contacts are displaying (unselected google and made sure the contacts tab was blank). I don't see any filters except for the "only display contacts with phone numbers". Are there any others hidden somewhere?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would double check this but I just picked up my phone and it is dead. Not sure why but my battery is completely drained...I think you will see different filter options base on contact application launch. IE...dialer, email, messaging
Raleran said:
I haven't seen anything on next months update... do you mean 2.2 will be released then?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We can only hope... here is one post on it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=754678
EX Dialer seems great
Kiserai said:
This is my wife's biggest gripe with her phone as well. The groups come through weird, and when she links two contacts together we can't seem to figure out how to set one as the default, so several contacts are showing up in her list as their Twitter username instead of their actual name.
Also, no assigning personalized ringtones for Google contacts? Seriously? Vanilla 2.1 and 2.2 don't have this problem.
I can't wait for somebody to write a vanilla ROM for the Captivate and get completely rid of touchwiz.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First off try EX Dialer, it seems fine, and I think it addresses your complaints.
Sendly any JB 4.2 release for your Cappy will astound you, most CM 10.1 based ROMs are really fine.
I like Captivating, though slim bean looks well supported.
Dosolutions
OK.. so i come across a second hero that i want to keep stock... I was going thru it and adding things when i tried to sync facebook i noticed the contacts did not sync... the updates work and what not.. and my contact card was updated.. but contacts appear in contact list.. Any help would be appreciated..
EDIT..before i get flamed i have searched XDA. havent really found a solid answer or anything that worked
If I remember the stock people app correctly you'll need to click link inside of any contact that you want to link to facebook.
I know i can do it that way...but at one point in time it would import my contacts from facebook to my contacts on the phone... i would have their emails, phone numbers, etc.. just by syncing facebook... i have heard s few people say this will not work with 2.1 bc something is wrong with facebook and the phone communicating... still trying to figure this out
thats the only way I know how to do it,on cupcake it was automatic as long as you set up the contact to sync when you put it in your contact list originally. I think they took a step backwards in that aspect when the did the update.
almost makes me want to downgrade..lol...i really miss that feature...
The Facebook contact sync should work just fine. They didn't remove that feature in 2.1.
Try deleting the cache and data in your Contacts, People, and Facebook apps. Go into Settings-->Applications-->Manage applications and then scroll down and find Contacts Storage. Open it and Delete cache and data. Then do the same in People and any Facebook ones too.
!!!Warning -- This will delete all the contacts from your phone, so make sure they are all linked to Google before you do this!!!
Afterward, it will take a few minutes for all the contacts to be re-synced/re-added back to your phone, but this may fix the issues you're having and get your Facebook ones in there now.
Hi All,
Setup my device last night, and a while ago, I started creating all my phone contacts as google ones, so that on restore, or setting up a new device, syncing my google account would bring all my numbers down.
However I noticed something a little bit strange. Some of my contacts appear to have their pictures there, and look fine in the small thumbnail in the people app, but when opening up the picture, it has a strange dot filter applied to it.
I use HaxSync to add facebook pictures as my google contact pictures, and when viewing them from a web browser they are fine. Doesnt seem to happen to all, just a few.
Anyone encountered this too? Any ideas about how to get around it? Seems very odd
Regards
Jonny
Update, well there was definitely something strange going on, and I haven't figured it out, but as a work around, in gmail (on a PC) I exported all my contacts to a google file. This neglects to export images that are on the contacts.
I then deleted all my contacts and synced my phone up, basically removing all contacts, and removed HaxSync. I then imported my saved contacts and instead of using a third party app to get high resolution photos for contacts, I did a contacts sync from the facebook app direct.
The images pulled still seem to be of decent clarity so maybe its something to do with the way the phone (or contacts app) parses images that are embedded into your google contacts.
I actually remember reading in a review about this filter too - trying to find it, but not that important now really.
Anyway. If anyone figures out why it does it then that would be good, and probably helpful to others at some point
JP
From my understading HTC have been quite clever
Google contacts as a general rule of thumb (pardon the pun) use small thumbnails. Only recently have they started using higher quality thumbnails for contacts. Anyway, if the image is of low quality instead of it being pixelated and looking like sh*t, they basically add the dot matrix filter to make it look a bit more professional. To be fair, hats off to HTC it works and they are the first people i've seen attempt such a thing.
The secret is to get gmail contacts all high res, the problem is i am still struggling on just how to do that, seemed to work fine on my nexus but it varies from one device to another, pain in the arse in all honesty.
Ah that seems to make sense. That would explain why it would happen on only a few specific pictures.
The Facebook contact sync still seems to be working well, and there are only a few that have the filter now. I might go and double check to if those that are filtered have low resolution pictures on their Facebook account.
Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2
i had that and i cured it by editing the picture in the contact .
Hope it helps
topbanana4 said:
i had that and i cured it by editing the picture in the contact .
Hope it helps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is OK and definitely solve the problem. But to do it contact by contact having 1400 people in register and approx half of them are pictured, then it may be be time consuming process Interestingly I have not had this problem with my recently purchased xperia Z. Would be fine to solve it with an updated patch.
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.