[Q] Utterly stupid importing of "All Contacts" from Google. - Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi All,
Before you say it, I know what I'm doing and understand how Google contacts work, I had a HTC HD2 (thanks Pongster and XDA!) and I am used to Android.
I know how Google contacts work, infact I submitted a bug fix to AweSync to fix up their syncing of Google Contacts with Lotus Notes.
Why does the Samsung Galaxy 1 (and 2!) show me _ALL CONTACTS_ when trying to SMS people? or when I try to save a newly dialled number into contacts, it shows all contacts?
I don't want to SMS an email address! I don't want to sift through 1,300 contacts yet this idiot phone is showing me them.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/derpderp.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/diddlyderp.jpg
http://members.iinet.net.au/~scottylans/derpphone.jpg
It's listing email Address's in the SMS TO: field - yet I've CLEARLY unticked "All contacts" and I've made it only show contacts with a phone number.
What is wrong with this thing?
EDIT: also, forgetting my ring tone every time I reboot isn't impressing me either.

Okay, I can't answer all your problems, and I do agree that the management of contacts on this phone is pretty poor, but there's obviously ways round certain issues.
One thing that will immediately help you is to use the contacts app to send SMS, rather than the SMS app. Select your contact (filtered as shown in your post) and you can swipe them left to SMS or right to call. That's a pretty handy feature.
However, if you're sending a message to more than 1 person you're back to square 1. I'd strongly recommend getting GO SMS Pro and GO Contacts (both free) from the Market. They're excellent replacements and I'm sure you'll be a LOT happier with them.

Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A

johncmolyneux said:
Okay, I can't answer all your problems, and I do agree that the management of contacts on this phone is pretty poor, but there's obviously ways round certain issues.
One thing that will immediately help you is to use the contacts app to send SMS, rather than the SMS app. Select your contact (filtered as shown in your post) and you can swipe them left to SMS or right to call. That's a pretty handy feature.
However, if you're sending a message to more than 1 person you're back to square 1. I'd strongly recommend getting GO SMS Pro and GO Contacts (both free) from the Market. They're excellent replacements and I'm sure you'll be a LOT happier with them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Would go contacts solve my issue when saving a new phone number into my contactl ist?

wizzbang3 said:
Would go contacts solve my issue when saving a new phone number into my contactl ist?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It does what you describe above. I don't know what you expect it to do though. You dial a number, click "Add to contacts" or "New contact" to either list all your contacts or create a new one.

is there any solution to this, i quite like the messaging app, but find it quite annoying when i have to search through hundreds of contacts, or else exit out to the contact application to text some1 who's actually in my contacts list ....
Its not a deal breaker for me, i prefer the stock than go sms or handcent, or any alternative i've tried, so if there is no fix i'll grin and bear it but if there is please help out
.... its not that i prefer the stock to any other, its just that no other provides anything that makes me want to move from stock, and since both will be running anyways it seems pointless to be wasting battery .... also i found double contacts problems with other apps aswell

Osmosae said:
is there any solution to this, i quite like the messaging app, but find it quite annoying when i have to search through hundreds of contacts, or else exit out to the contact application to text some1 who's actually in my contacts list ....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's just poor design by Samsung.

wizzbang3 said:
It's just poor design by Samsung.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why? I think it is a good idea, since I very often MMS to email addresses! It is very handy to automatically downsize an image to MMS size when you are sending it to a person who you know will be looking at the email on their phone (e.g. my friend in Japan doesn't have MMS at all, over there nearly everything is email).

Been wondering about this too, i know the contact app you can customize what to show, which is fine, but the sms app show everyone you have been in contact with on google. Only "fix" i've found so far is to use another SMS app that can filter the contact list.

The solution is very simple. Just open display options in contacts and select only display contacts with numbers. Also untick everything that you don't want it to display. I don't save any numbers in phone or sim card so I save it to gmail account.
Even if I select only gmail it shows lots unnecessary contacts. So I went to gmail on my laptop and opened the contacts (phone book or something like that. Its been over a year so I don't remember)
I created a new category (u can choose an existing one) and transferred every single contact that I needed under it.
And thats it. Everytime I format my phone I just go to contact display settings on my phone and only choose the category that I made. And it only shows the contacts that I need.
It works also if u want to save a contact. I chose to save contacts to my gmail account when it asks. And everytime u save it saves it to the category that u choose.
I have been using this over a year and work flawlessly. I remember beig sick of choosing amongst 1000s of contacts.
I tried to explain as I could. If there is a problem ask me I will try to help.
Edit:
I realized this doesn't answer ur question about sms. This doesn't fix that SMS list behaviour.

Related

Problem on 2.3.3- Messaging won't disassociate old # of contact, +notification issue!

Hi, I have a weird issue with one of my contacts. An old number they no longer use just won't delete! I Tried to delete the contact altogehter, and add it again, even tried to change the name by adding something extra to it, but whenever I try to text the person, the previous number shows up, THEN the current number (and not just the name of the contact like it should. Something to keep in mind is that the old number does not show up in the actual contacgts directory, ONLY whenever I text them, and it doesn't show their name, which is really REALLY annoying!!! Can anyone help? I tried uninstalling/reinstalling using Titanium Backup, even the data wipe of the messaging app, didn't work! Still doing the same thing, seems like the app won't disassociate the past number from the current, and the weird thing is that I had deleted that number from the contacts long before, when I was still on 2.1 (stock). Now that I have updated to the stock 2.3.3, it brought that number back! Please help, this really sucks and I don't know what to do, don't want to do a repair install, so much work :-( Another issue I found is that the messaging won't sound the notification I set, it does blink the LED light, but won't vibrate or sound the notification I set up for it... What should I do??? Thanks in advance...
sorry just tried merging the posts to my first post, but can't delete this one.
Same as the upper post, sorry again...
I had a similar problem. You can edit your contacts at the actual gmail website from your internet browser. Also remember when adding contacts from phone, click save to gmail and sync contacts every now and then if auto-sync is disabled.
Really? Where do I edit my contacts??? When I check my contacts in Gmail, it only shows me the email contacts I have, no actual phone numbers
Pharaoness said:
Really? Where do I edit my contacts??? When I check my contacts in Gmail, it only shows me the email contacts I have, no actual phone numbers
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
At the top right there should be a contacts option, look a bit lower and there should be more options pertaining to it.
I did check that, explored all the options within, and none of my phone contacts show up! Only my email contacts!!! Any other way to handle this??? The sound part seems to have resolved (sometimes it does ring my notification tone), but the messaging app still shows the number I deleted months ago, no idea why it won't disassociate the number. In my contacts list, that number doesn't show. But in messaging, when I try to send that person a meggae, instead of showing the NAME of the person I am sending it to (like it should), it shows the old number and then the new number!!! Any ideas???
Pharaoness said:
I did check that, explored all the options within, and none of my phone contacts show up! Only my email contacts!!! Any other way to handle this??? The sound part seems to have resolved (sometimes it does ring my notification tone), but the messaging app still shows the number I deleted months ago, no idea why it won't disassociate the number. In my contacts list, that number doesn't show. But in messaging, when I try to send that person a meggae, instead of showing the NAME of the person I am sending it to (like it should), it shows the old number and then the new number!!! Any ideas???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is somehow either associated with your google account or your at&t account, does you at&t plan have an online back up by chance?
I'm actually with Rogers, and have never used their online backup (nor have I checked to see if they provide any). But something rather weird happened, I deleted the messages, asked my friend to send me a text, and when they did, their name showed up like it is supposed to! I hope it is resolved now, thank you all for trying to help
Will update if the problem persists.

[Q] Does CM9 for SGII use the same Samsung contacts "engine" as 2.3.4?

Samsung Galaxy 2 has an AWFUL design in the contacts system.
If my friend Bill calls me and I go to save his new phone number into an existing contact, the phone lists ALL 1200 Google contacts "All Contacts" - it's awful design and stupid.
I've discussed this previously in a thread here (some people didn't initially understand my point)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1241425
Also when I go to send a new SMS from the Messaging tool on the stock Galaxy 2, when I type in a partial name it resolves email address's as well. Why on EARTH would I want to "SMS" an email address? It's such awful terrible, stupid design and I find it frustrating.
Does the CM9 builds for the SGII continue to do this or do they use a different contacts / messaging engine which doesn't have this poor design?
Anyone know the answer (or even understand what I'm getting at?)
Appreciate it.
Anyone? I need to decide to u/g or not
I think, the idea behind listing all accounts is:
1. You may add a new number to an already existing e-mail account, you have in your list.
2. The SMS app isn't seen as SMS only, but as an overall message app. So you can write a "message" either to a number or an e-mail.
Glad that I could help.
skaterbub2003 said:
I think, the idea behind listing all accounts is:
1. You may add a new number to an already existing e-mail account, you have in your list.
2. The SMS app isn't seen as SMS only, but as an overall message app. So you can write a "message" either to a number or an e-mail.
Glad that I could help.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1:
I don't want to add a number to an existing EMAIL account I want to add it to a list of "My Contacts" NOT "All Contacts" - this is the way other Android devices work and it's utterly terrible design by Samsung.
2: The SMS app sucks then, can I replace it entirely? If so, any suggestions?
FWIW, to replace both stock sms and contacts I have tried Contapps and Deja Office.
Hope it helps

[Q] SMS Popup

I have been using "SMS popup" on my android phones for years now. Never had a problem until I installed it on this new Rezound. The SMS popup comes up when a new text comes in, it just doesnt pull up the person's profile photo as it's supposed to. It's got to be an HTC/Sense issue. I've used SMS popup on AOSP, Samsung Touchwiz, and Team Hacksung's ICS port for the Galaxy S; all of which funtioned properly.
I know I can get handcent but I really like the way this HTC messaging app looks (and its ad-free, unlike handcent). And SMS popup is such a simple way to accomplish the popup on incoming texts and still allow me to use the manufacturer's messaging app.
Has anybody else run into this problem or have any suggestions?
Thanks!
Do you have your contacts linked? Maybe it doesn't know which one to grab...
Alternatively go with Go SMS which is free and does pop up.
MrSmith317 said:
Do you have your contacts linked? Maybe it doesn't know which one to grab...
Alternatively go with Go SMS which is free and does pop up.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Some contacts are linked, some arent. Either way, neither contact photos shows up.
The way my contacts are set up is, I have a google gmail contacts. None of those have any photos in them. Then I also let facebook sync my friends list to my contact list. Some facebook friends also have a google gmail contact equivalent. Those are the ones that are linked.
This is the same way I've always done my contacts on all my other android phones and it's never been a problem. This HTC phone is the first time I've ran across this problem. It's like the SMS popup is calling for a contact photo, but the HTC version of the contact app is calling it by a different name.
Weird, SMS popup works just fine for me pulling up the contact pic using sense etc (innefilibis ROM if that matters)
By the way, I used Handcent for years (with the ads blocked) but this is the first phone I like the stock SMS so much (with red theme bubbles) I didn't even bother installing it.

[Q] Stock contacts and SMS apps - configuration problems

I moved from Samsung Galaxy S2 to S3 with a later Android version (4.3), and there are just a couple of things that are driving me crazy as far as the stock contacts and sms apps are concerned.
Before I decide to move to other apps (which I don't really want to do as I've been pretty glad about the stock apps so far):
How to change the generic picture for contacts?
I liked the earlier format with simple silhouettes in different colours and I totally hate the new creepy-looking faces with a smile, eyes, nose etc. (sorry, I am not allowed to post outside links yet, which is why I had to remove all the sample links from this question and the following ones, which may make my questions a little more difficult to understand).
How to remove the contact pictures besides the text messages?
Before, the text messages were displayed with text bubbles only.
Now there are little annoying contact pictures next to the messages. I've found a couple of threads about it on the Internet but no real solutions, unfortunately.
And this one has been bugging me since Galaxy S2:
How to hide all those contacts that include no phone number (i.e. those imported from my Google account)?
I am able to hide the contact in the normal view (if I simply scroll down the list, only phone contacts are displayed) but whenever I use the in-app search option, the e-mail contacts appear, too, which is pretty annoying (I use the search to find someone I want to call, not if I want to write an e-mail).
Anyone, anything? I know these aren't exactly the most interesting or serious problems, and they're rather Android- than phone-related... but I've spent a lot of time researching this and I've found no solution whatsoever (besides using other apps).
Question [Q] Stock contacts and SMS apps - configuration problems
I moved from Samsung Galaxy S2 to S3 with a later Android version (4.3), and there are just a couple of things that are driving me crazy as far as the stock contacts and sms apps are concerned.
Before I decide to move to other apps (which I don't really want to do as I've been pretty glad about the stock apps so far):
How to change the generic picture for contacts?
I liked the earlier format with simple silhouettes in different colours and I totally hate the new creepy-looking faces with a smile, eyes, nose etc. (sorry, I am not allowed to post outside links yet, which is why I had to remove all the sample links from this question and the following ones, which may make my questions a little more difficult to understand).
How to remove the contact pictures besides the text messages?
Before, the text messages were displayed with text bubbles only.
Now there are little annoying contact pictures next to the messages. I've found a couple of threads about it on the Internet but no real solutions, unfortunately.
And this one has been bugging me since Galaxy S2:
How to hide all those contacts that include no phone number (i.e. those imported from my Google account)?
I am able to hide the contact in the normal view (if I simply scroll down the list, only phone contacts are displayed) but whenever I use the in-app search option, the e-mail contacts appear, too, which is pretty annoying (I use the search to find someone I want to call, not if I want to write an e-mail).
Hi! Changing default generic picture is not possible without root at least(i think it might be best to use a custom rom maybe), removing the picture next to each sms is linked with the contact list so you should try other sms apps from playstore for that and hiding contact with no number in contact list is impossible - try to make a group with the ones that have number and one group with the ones that don't have numbers or remove the email only contact from google contact list(on gmail). Hope i gave you some directions Cheers!

How to show contacts with phone numbers ONLY?

I tried searching the net, but everything I can find relates to MM or earlier. I definitely fixed this issue when I first got this phone, so that only people with numbers were shown in my contacts list. Now I upgraded to Nougat just a few hours ago, and now I can't figure out how to do that again. That option doesn't seem to exist anymore! Am I missing something?? Or did they remove this option from the stock Contacts and Phone apps?
This is absurd. Pulling up Contacts shows a huge list of everyone I've ever interacted with over email, which is beyond stupid, imo. If I need to reach some person via email whom I don't text/call, then that's what the Gmail app is there for. What's the point of this mess? Sorry about the mini rant.
Same Problem
Same Phone, Same Problem, Same Question?!
I'm convinced now that, yes, Google really did think that a dysfunctional Contacts app is what the people want. So, the only solution here is to switch to third party apps. Oh well, not a big deal I guess.
I found a work around, create a new label in contacts and all the contacts with numbers to that label. Then you can customise the view on your phone to display only that label. If you ever add any contacts in the future with a phone number just ensure you add them to that label which you can do via your phone.

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