ISO advice on managing Android contacts
 

I've been using an Android phone (S3) for almost 2 years now, but still have no clue how the phone book is structured.

Basically, it consists of people who I actually call (about 100) along with all(?) of my Gmail contacts from the past 10 years (5,000+); some --but, not all-- of my Wechat and Skype contacts are also thrown into the mix. The thing is that it only displays about 100 contacts, though they are a mishmash of phone/gmail/wechat/skype. The others are all there if I search for them. I would love to be able to view my phone contacts only. A secondary goal would be able to easily merge contacts that appear in 2+ places (I have seven entries for one of my colleagues, and I always have to use trial and error to pick the entry that includes his current phone number).

Back in my Nokia days, my phone book was extremely easy to use. While I appreciate the fact that Android seemingly allows me to do more powerful things and that my numbers are always backed up somewhere in Google's world, I find myself dumbfounded by the complexity of this system.

As such, I'm interested in hearing practical advice about how to bring order to this chaos.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

E

PS - Is IOS smarter about this? I've never owned an iPhone, but I'm in the market for a new phone, and will make the switch if there are compelling reasons to do so. (I love my S3, but I find myself having to flash it every 2 months because certain apps seem to mess with performance in a major way.)

Each account you set up on the phone is a potential phone book. Your phone is pulling from your Google contacts, in this case. As I recall (it's been 4 years since I had Android), it would only show contacts in the main Contacts group on the phone. I created a new contacts category called Defunct and put the ones I didn't want on my phone in there.

Check out the Account setup screens - there is probably an option to turn off suggested/recent contacts or even pick what contacts group you want synced to your phone.

The easiest way to manage is by logging into your Gmail account, going into the Contacts section and managing there. Starring the ones you want in the phone is probably the easiest way to get them towards the top. You can also run the "Find & Merge Duplicates" option to clean things up as well.