I hate the People/Contacts list in Android so much that I'm seriously thinking about leaving the Android system.

(I'm referring to Android "fishing" any and all persons you have ever e-mailed, phoned, skyped, etc ... and building a contact list based on this. I also hate - to a slightly lesser degree - that Android "pushes" new versions on you, with "new and improved features" and don't let you decide if you want to keep the old or the new way).

I'm NOT considering a move to Apple.

So, a question to Windows Phone users: How customizable is it? As much as a Windows (computer) environment? Any drawbacks? Please share your experience.

And to a more general audience: are there any (fully customizable) option(s) to Android / iOS / Windows Phone?

(I have some technical knowledge with (Windows) computers, not so much with phones, smart or not; so not shy on learning other OSes, if necessary)

What kind of phone do you have? On the ones I use I can decide which contacts to show.

FWIW; Windows Phone is even worse, its Facebook contact integration seriously messed up my contacts database.

I'd find a third party app that can help here, it sounds like something that can easily be fixed.

I have a Nexus 4 and two Nexus 7's, and I get to decide whether I want the updates or not. My Nexus 4 is still on 4.2.1 just in case I wanted to enable LTE One of my Nexus 7 will not be upgraded because I really like the blue/gray WiFi icon vs. White in the latest version. Too bad I had to 'upgrade' one Nexus 7 to find out I don't like the new version.

I bought a Lumia 520 just to check out Windows Phone, and the availability of Apps is pretty poor. I certainly don't see everything I use regularly on it. But I do like Here Map, which is a main selling point of Lumia devices as far as I am concerned.

Leaving Android and not going to iOS is probably pretty hard. I have an iPod touch which gives me access to iOS App eco system. For example, the iOS version of Google Hangouts allows VoIP calls but the Android version does not....

For Android phones, it is the carriers that pushed the OS updates. You could either get a non-carrier based phone like Nexus or Google Edition version phones or root your phone. Then you get to control when or if you want to update the OS.

For the extra contacts, you could filter and not display "other contacts". You could even delete them from time to time. I don't know which Android phone you got, but on the Galaxy line it is very easy to control your contact list.

Forums are a great place to consider how other people perceive things. It had never occurred to me to have a gripe about my phone's voluminous contacts list. I look at the list so rarely that I couldn't even remember how to find it.

(It's in the "People" app on my phone. When I got the phone, People was in the dock at the bottom of my launcher. After a while, I realized I never used it, so I removed it from there in favor of something else.)

I never use People because I look up my contacts either by talking to the phone or with Gesture Search.

Getting back to the OP's gripe, I see that People can organize contacts by groups and by favorites. A quick look at mine reveals that I've never used Groups: I just looked up my son and found I never added him to my Family group.

People lets me specify which contacts I want it to display. The "Contacts to display" setting lists all possible contact sources plus a Customize option where I could make my own fine-tuned list. This would all seem like a waste of time to me; as I said, I just scribble my contact's name in the Gesture Search window and go from there. I like letting the phone do the work.

Moto G, with Android 4.4, I believe. I was told that in previous versions it was possible to select what it is shown, but that this in not possible anymore (and I have looked at it and have found nothing)

I also looked for a phonebook only app and have not found any.

Thanks for the information about the Windows Phone problem; I'm afraid to an even worse situation.

Thanks for your report. I'm having a hard time getting used to the whole smartphone concept as it is implemented: my previous phone was a Motorola flip-phone (Razr V, I believe ). It is nice to have some computing power in my hands, but I'm not used to the always on, always (and fully) connected environment. I vastly prefer an on-demand system, where I'm not interrupted every few minutes with some notification or other, mostly irrelevant.

I'm used to fully customized computers (both hardware and software), so no love for the Apple approach here and no desire to enter their ecosystem.

My previous experience with Android was through an Asus TFT700 tablet (which was wi-fi only) so I had not encountered these "features" I really dislike until the battery of my old phone died.

I'm in Brazil; my phone is unlocked. It's Motorola that pushes the upgrades.

I'm open to root the phone, but it being unlocked, I don't know if I will gain something doing it. As I said (replying to ScottC), in my version of Android there is not the option to display phone-only contacts (I googled it and indeed, it is one of the "new enhanced features" of newer Android versions.)

I only want the phone to keep the phone numbers. If I try to enter a name and phone number combination, and I enter the name with any slight variation with the name of that person retrieved by Android looking at Skype or e-mail, I will have a duplicate entry for that person (in some fora, people complain of having several entries for the same person).

I can't believe that there is not a simple way to do it; the current one looks (at least to me) inefficient and a mess. Hate to have to deal with it.

First time I heard of "Gesture Search"; will take a look at it. Thanks!

That would bug me, too. That's why I configure my Android apps not to notify me, except of course for those notifications which I find worthwhile.

One thing I like about the Android platform is that it is very customizable. Because much of it is open source, people can modify it to meet their needs, and we can benefit from the modifications of others. I don't think you'll find that on any other platform, so Android is probably as good as you're going to get.

That said, it's not yet clear to me how you'd like it to work. If you could explain it here, perhaps I or others can recommend some customizations. For example, one thing that irritated me at first -- maybe this is what you're talking about -- was that the Contacts app seemed to list every contact address (including email addresses), but I don't send email from the Contacts app, so I changed it to list only those contacts that have phone numbers.

Also, there are a number of replacement contact list apps in the Play store. I've tried a few, but I'm able to make the stock Contacts app work well enough for my needs.

Mikew99, that is the point! In Android 4.4 (which came with my phone) the Contacts app changed its name to People, and there is no more the option to hide contacts with e-mail addresses only - now ALL contacts are listed. I would be happy if it were possible to chose to display only the contacts with phone numbers, but this option is not in my version.

Apparently, all of you that are saying that this is trivial to do have older versions of Android.

Now that you mention it, I remember being frustrated with the overload of contacts and relieved when I found the setting to only display those with phone numbers.

The contacts list in the dialer in Android 4.4 does that automatically. Just touch the Search icon in the dialer to expose it.

Gotcha. This was indeed very easy in Gingerbread (one simple check box) and still relatively easy (but more complex) in Jelly Bean, but I'm still on 4.2.2, so I can't help with Kit Kat.

Hmmm maybe this is something new in 4.4. I am still in 4.3 with my Galaxy Note II. I don't know.. 4.4 sounds bad.. LOL. It seems strange that it would take out all the filtering options. I would go to androidcentral or xda forums for your phone and ask someone there to see if they could help you on the contact (or People) thingy.

The worst is that 4.4 is bad and you just have to root it and put on 4.3 or something earlier.