We recently attended a trouble call, where the customer had bought a new Android phone and had correctly joined it to her Google account.
She complained that many of her old phone contacts had not populated the contact list on her new phone. Understandably, she was very worried that she had lost many of her valuable phone contacts that she had accumulated over the years and which numbered in the hundreds!
To start with, she had transferred the SIM card from the old to the new phone, which resulted in some contacts appearing in the new phone’s contact list. Indeed, when we set the new phone to show the SIM card contacts, many contacts were showing there; but many were missing.
Luckily she still had access to her old phone. On close inspection, I observed that the vast majority of contacts were indeed stored on the old “Device” (ie the phone itself). I then proceeded to copy these “Device” contacts to her Google account. A Google account is stored in the “Cloud” and acts as a very handy and secure repository for all of your personal information; be it phone contacts, Gmail emails or calendar events.
However, the SIM card can only store a minimal amount of contacts (around 100 to 250 depending on the SIM card memory) and so many contacts were still missing on her new phone. To start the recovery process, I proceeded to copy these SIM contacts to her Google account.
On inspection of her new phone, I saw that when she created a new phone contact, it was being saved to her “Device” or the “SIM card”. Also her Contacts option, was set to only show the “Device” contacts stored on her phone. It is advisable to set only the Gmail contacts to show, in order to avoid cluttering the contact list with duplicate entries.
Once all of the contacts were sync’d (synchronised) to the Cloud, the user’s Contacts appeared in the new phone’s contact list. Needless to say, she was delighted!
We concluded our trouble call, by explaining to the customer that going forward, it is imperative that all contacts, are saved to her Google account, where they will be readily available and secure in the Cloud.
All of the actions were accomplished via the menus on the phones and depending on the version of Android that is running on the phone, requires a different method to achieve.
You can see how important a Google account can be for helping you save your precious information. Therefore please be sure to secure your account with a strong 8 digit password.
Below are some screenshots showing the various screen that you need to navigate through this process.
Use the dots on the top right corner of your screen to access these menus.
