Google sync is a useless unreliable piece of crap

quinnd6

So my phone died yesterday.
I had used google sync to supposedly backup the contacts from my phone the day before or so that's what I thought it was fricking doing.
Anyway when my phone died I decided to go to gmail and login and go to contacts and low and behold there is effing nothing.
Not one bloody contact made it through.
I had my gmail account on my phone logged in and it was supposed to have synced my contacts and it synced nothing.
So people don't rely on google sync or smartphones for bloody anything especially Android phones and Google or any other company for that matter.
Use an old fashioned pen and paper phonebook to backup your numbers.
If you have important stuff on your phone and it breaks and isn't worth repairing you are well and truly screwed.

kkhornet

We're all your contacts in your phone actually saved to your gmail account though or had you them saved on sim card/phone memory
I've never had a problem with contacts and as soon as I save a new one my Google is updated immediately when I check contacts.google.com

niallb

This has been working for me flawlessly for years across nearly a dozen android phones.

What model phone do you have? Samsung and HTC in particular default to saving your contacts to an account that they control.
They should still be available from those logins.
The sync you did may just have sync'ed your SIM contacts to the cloud, and that may have been empty.

quinnd6

It was an Xperia Play.

kkhornet

quinnd6 wrote: »

It was an Xperia Play.

Where were your contacts saved. Device or cloud

quinnd6

On my phone.

Tenigate

quinnd6 wrote: »

It was an Xperia Play.

I'm using google and never had a problem syncing contacts across samsung, huawei, xperia, nexus... Sounds like you were adding them as phone contacts instead of adding them to your google account.
Try this. Open contacts, and click add. See if there's a dropdown where it says "save to"

In addition most phones have backup software. Here is where you can backup info to options like xperia transfer, samsung backup, maybe even google drive or onedrive. It's a good idea to do this even if you use sync in case your google contacts are ever compromised.

loyatemu

never assume something is backed up until you've checked that it actually is. As others have said, sync will only work for contacts that are saved to your google account - most phones also offer the option of saving to the phone where they won't be backed up.

I've used Google to save my contacts for years, never a problem. It's also backing up my photos, WhatsApp messages and SMS (via SMS Backup+).

ED E

When you add a new contact you pick "Google Contact" or "Phone Contact". You clearly chose wrongly.

kkhornet

quinnd6 wrote: »

On my phone.

That's why they're not showing on Google so. As others have said they will only appear if saved to Google in your contact settings.
Depending what's wrong with the phone it may be possible to recover the contacts if you connect your phone to a pc and save them on the pc. Then you can save to Google/input manually and one your new device is set up they will sync and be there.

If you get a new phone it might be an idea to set your contacts to save to Google instead of the phone then as any new future contacts will be saved automatically in the cloud

BowWow

On about my sixth smart phone, also have a tablet and a PC. Never ever had an issue with Google sync. Wonderful system - makes things much easier.

Respectfully RTFM..:)

quinnd6

None of the contacts on my phone had gmail addresses just mobile numbers so I didn't make them google contacts.
If I knew my phone was going to break I would have researched it more.
It should be a simple and easy you shouldn't have to eff around making groups and messing around just so your contacts are backed up.
If it says its syncing your contacts you would expect it to sync your contacts.
You shouldn't have to look up a freaking tutorial so it does what its supposed to do.
I bet I'm not the only one who got codded thinking it was backing up my contacts to end up with absolutely nothing backed up at all.

ED E

Ehmmmmmm..

Tenigate

quinnd6 wrote: »

If it says its syncing your contacts you would expect it to sync your contacts.

I have a google account for private use and an outlook account for work. I'd rather my phone didn't randomly sync contacts between the phone and these 2 accounts!

quinnd6

You have to remember people my Xperia Play does not have that.
That is all I'm familiar with.
It uses Android 2.3.3 so it's well behind.
I'm glad they simplified it.
It needed it really.
My Xperia Play has none of that.
Thankfully I'll be getting a new phone soon anyway.

ED E

Wow, Gingerbread. No wonder it died.

quinnd6

I actually fixed it again a couple of hours ago.
Now I need to find a way of backing up the phone numbers.
Oh yes my sd card is dead so I can't make an xcf file on the sd card and it won't allow me to convert contacts to google contacts.
I'm starting to see the drawbacks of Android gingerbread now.

niallb

If they're just phone numbers, you might be able to find an option to copy them to your SIM.
Then you'd have the option to import from the sim to a newer phone that would allow you add them to Google.
The only issue there is your gingerbread phone probably takes a different size SIM to your new phone.
Adapters are available...

Alternatively, you could plug it into a computer and see do you get an option to backup contacts that way.

quinnd6

It's ok I found another micro sd card so I'm going to go with a vcf file as it's less likely to chop names in half.
I exported contacts to the sim card as well so I'm doubly covered.

Dave147

Thought I stumbled on a thread from 2009 for a second. Yeah it's irrelevant whether your friends have gmail addresses, saving as Google contacts basically means your numbers are saved to your Google account. I've been using it since Android 1.0 and it's worked perfectly from day one. This isn't Google/Android/Anyone else's fault.