Database Users

TW Contacts App

The contacts app that comes with touchwiz is pretty neat, but i have this question... On the groups tab i cannot seem to add any google contacts to any of the groups, has anyone gotten that to work? The tab is useless to me otherwise, I am only using google contacts, not contacts on the phone or sim or any social network.

Apparently to be able to add any additional functionality to contacts (groups, separate ringtones, etc) they must be stored on the phone, which IMO defeats Androids main feature-syncing to GMail so you don't have to enter contacts into your phone again. It's a shame because I like most of the features of the TW Contacts app, but how can they not just use GMail as the default?

Really, you can't set ringtones on google contacts either? That's quite awful.

Agreed, this is a horrible implementation of contacts on Android. Why in the world would I want a "local" contact book that isn't in sync with my already awesome "cloud" contact book. That is a massive fail for TouchWiz in my book. That one thing alone might push me to a custom ROM when it becomes available.

How to limit Gmail contacts to 'My Contacts'?

Is there anyway to prevent all the contacts with whom I've ever contacted from showing up as contacts that are synced?

hit the menu key and you should be able to pick the groups that are displayed.

The menu key shows I have 3 display options - phone, SIM, and Google.
In Gmail, I have 'My Contacts' (160 contacts) and All Contacts has 1300 contacts. All 1300 are being synced. How can I limit to the My Contacts that show up just as they should online within Gmail??
I even have smaller subgroups such as family and co-workers, which also do not show up on the phone. ??
Thanks...

Try the checkbox "Only display contacts with phones"
Otherwise the stock contacts app isn't very good at sorting.

exoplasm said:
Try the checkbox "Only display contacts with phones"
Otherwise the stock contacts app isn't very good at sorting.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That DOES limit to those with only phones. However, the list still does not match up to the list of 'My Contacts' in Gmail.
Hell, even the iphone synced perfectly with Gmail's contacts. What in the world is going on here?? Surely others are experiencing this weirdness too? I just don't see the option to sync to subgroups the way others see this.

There is no option to do this. Big oversight on Samsung's part. Coming from a G1 where I could sync a specific list this is a step back. Hoping they add this to their update.

See that's what I don't understand coming from the iphone. Isn't there a stand-alone contacts app that can properly sync with Gmail's 'My Contacts'?

I'm as flabbergasted as the rest of you all. This is the one aspect of TouchWiz that so far feels like a huge step backward from G1. Maybe some don't like the auto-sync to the cloud aspect, but for me it was a huge selling point of Android as I didn't have to hook it up to any computer and it was always in sync with my online address book. This is just lame.

Do any of you with more Android experience see this to be corrected in an impending update, possibly before 2.2?

I was able to change mine throug display options, listing google and phone, and selecting only contacts w/ #'s and mine works great!!!

You might try a third-party app in the Market called Contacts Evolved. It does not replace the brain-dead Samsung/T-Mobile Contacts app, which cannot be uninstalled. But Contacts Evolved can be used as an alternate user interface.
The advantage is that the Groups from Google's Gmail contacts are displayed, and the contacts are segregated by group into handy tabs. (The syncing done by the native app seems to pulls down the Groups data element, but that app ignores it.)
One downside is that Contacts Evolved seems a little buggy. There are some force-close issues.

Can't put contacts in groups

While cleaning up my contact list from transitioning from my old blackberry, I was trying to add contacts to specific groups (family, friends, work, etc). However, when in the contacts app, I click on groups at the top, click on a group, then tap Add Member, which takes me to a blank screen that says No contacts.
Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Going to gmail and editing my contacts' groups on my computer doesn't change it on my phone.

Yep. I have the same problem and so do a lot of other people from what I've heard. Haven't found a way to fix this yet. The only workaround I've found is add a new contact to your phone with the same name and link it with your existing contact.

There are two ways to fix this. One is to create at least 1 "dummy" contact for each category. THEN you can manually move contacts to categories correctly, though this is very tedious...
Or, you can use an app. Look for GROUPY in the market. This will allow you to reassign all contacts to the groups you desire.

I think found out the issue. You can't put the contacts that are from your google account into groups, they have to be contacts stored on the phone. This is just stupid, and I can't find a way to copy all of my contacts to the phone.
I tried out Groupy as you suggested, masterotaku, and it doesn't seem to do what I'm looking for.

I was able to move all my google (and facebook, and twitter, and phone stored) contacts to categories with Groupy, so I guess I don't understand what you mean...
What this app appears to be doing is creating phone stored contacts that link to the existing sync accounts (google, facebook, myspace, twitter in my case). I've been able to categorize all of these contacts seamlessly with Groupy. Took me a couple of minutes to un-mess the whole affair.

masterotaku said:
I was able to move all my google (and facebook, and twitter, and phone stored) contacts to categories with Groupy, so I guess I don't understand what you mean...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Groupy puts your contacts into a folder on your home screen. What I'm looking for is a way to get my contacts (all of which are either from my google account or facebook account) into groups inside the Contacts app on the Vibrant, which you can see on the pic I attached I took of the groups screen in the app itself. It appears you can only do that using contacts that are stored on the phone itself.

hurrpancakes said:
Groupy puts your contacts into a folder on your home screen. What I'm looking for is a way to get my contacts (all of which are either from my google account or facebook account) into groups inside the Contacts app on the Vibrant, which you can see on the pic I attached I took of the groups screen in the app itself. It appears you can only do that using contacts that are stored on the phone itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And I'm telling you that this app does precisely that.....All of my contacts are in the Contacts app's categories. I've since removed Twitter and Myspace contacts from the contact sync because it was entirely too many lol.
Groupy creates phone stored contacts and links them to their existing sync groups...notice the contact in the second snapshot..it's linked to the google and facebook sync's. Groupy does this....
I'm thinking you've downloaded some other app. search for "com.kigate.groupy" This app has NOTHING to do with putting contacts in a folder on the home screen.

masterotaku said:
And I'm telling you that this app does precisely that.....All of my contacts are in the Contacts app's categories. I've since removed Twitter and Myspace contacts from the contact sync because it was entirely too many lol.
Groupy creates phone stored contacts and links them to their existing sync groups...notice the contact in the second snapshot..it's linked to the google and facebook sync's. Groupy does this....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I see why I didn't notice. I searched for Groupy, and downloaded Groupie. lol
Thanks a bunch, GROUPY is doing exactly what you said.

[Q] Contacts annoyances (with GMail)

Hi,
I'm a bit annoyed by the way the Galaxy S works with Contacts:
All contacts are synced to Gmail instead of My Contacts
Gmail Groups are not synced, all Gmail contacts are in one group
No easy way to convert phone contacts to Google contacts or to merge contacts into a google contact
Essentially, I want to use GMail exclusively to manage contacts and have all of them synced between GMail and the phone.
I would appreciate any suggestions on how to achieve this, or maybe there is a better Contacts app out there?

This is not SGS issue, but the Android platform has been designed in the way that it's cloud computing centralised, in this case, Android phone is just the "client", you still need to maintain your contact in Gmail (web).
I tried delete a GMail contact in the phone, but that action will not delete the Gmail contact in Gmail server, sadly.

I've searched for solutions and found that the first two issues are solved on some phones, but that the Samsung Galaxy does not have the option to change the sync behaviour.
I want to maintain my contacts in GMail, but the problem is that the phone does not respect the GMail groups and it syncs "All contact", which means everyone I ever sent a mail. It should sync "My contacts", which only contains Contacts I created in GMail.
I hoped that there is maybe an alternative contacts app that does what I want.

_Fabian_ said:
I want to maintain my contacts in GMail, but the problem is that the phone does not respect the GMail groups and it syncs "All contact", which means everyone I ever sent a mail. It should sync "My contacts", which only contains Contacts I created in GMail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was also annoyed by that fact. But fortunately you can select to display only contacts with phone numbers associated in the contacts
application.
Just hit menu button while showing the list of contacts -> Display options -> only contacts with phones.
This at least solved my major issue with the google synching. Nice: typeahead in the gmail app still works for all people you ever sent a mail.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

Try this , it did the trick for me

_Fabian_ said:
I hoped that there is maybe an alternative contacts app that does what I want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried Contacts Evolved in the Market. It is a littly buggy, not even sure if it is actively supported. But it does display Gmail contact groups, segregated in tabs.
The actual syncing is still being done by the brain dead Samsung Contacts app, which cannot be uninstalled. It apparently does download the groups data element from Gmail contacts, but fails to do anything with it.

When I tried jp3 2.2 firmware the google groups showed, looks like it will be fixed in the 2.2 update.

Thanks for the answers. Displaying only contacts with phone numbers helps, and if the group thing is fixed in Froyo, thats alright for me.
Now I only need to convert my phone contacts to Google contacts, there should be an easy options like Phone to SIM and vice versa, but I could not find it. Looks like I may have to do it by hand.

This is like the only bad thing for me. Do more people confirm that it is fixed in Froyo?

Some of what I miss about Sense

Contacts: I loved the sense contacts (People) app. I liked that I can assign a facebook account for each contact. I used it for getting my contacts' facebook profile pic as their display pic. worked fairly simple and if a user updates his profile facebook pic, his/her contact pic is also changed. I didn't use the other functions of Sense's facebook integration though. The status updates was poorly implemented and displays "this person has updated their facebook profile" for whatever that friend does on facebook.
Now with vanilla , the sync with all contacts that the official facebook app offers doesn't work as I want, cause:
- I have some facebook friends that I don't want them as contacts in my phone. facebook will always sync the contact if he/she has a phone number in their profile. Which, for some friends, I don't want.
- If the same person has different names in facebook and in my contacts list, I won't get his picture.
So, is their a way to fix this sync issue?
Or, can I get the sense Dailer/People app in vanilla?
Or, Is there a good alternative in the market?