More HTC Hero problems can not handle 5,000 contacts

[BentBarrels]

As I mentioned in a previous thread i have had my Hero for about 1 week. I primarily need my phone for business. I made the decision to go with Android due to it being google and ease of importing contacts and calendar etc.

I just imported 5,000 contacts into my phone and now if I need to find a contact it takes minutes to pull up.....

I really like this phone HOWEVER the keyboard (way to small to type quickly on) and the in ability to handle 1,000's of contacts is going to force me to trade this phone and head back to the black berry

Is there another application for android that can handle 1,000's of contacts?????

 

[marctronixx]

most pocket PCs cant handle 5000 contacts!!! you know that data (PIM info) uses a LOT.. a LOT of memory resources and also taps the battery a little due to the enormous amount of data!

the behavior you are experiencing in the device searching thru contacts is to be expected. there is no program that can improve anything.. you would need more memory and a faster processor to gain any speed in searching over 3000+ contacts (and you have 5K!)

i dont see the hero as a business user device much less a power user given it does not have a physical keyboard. thats why i have a PRO2 side by side the hero.. i use the hero for casual, out about the town use and keep the PRO2 for business use. you are certainly better off going back to the crackberry or even a pocket pc platform...

 

[UTnick]

yeah, i am assuming with the extreme Facebook integration you won't find any relief with the Hero and all those contacts. perhaps there is an app out there, though. or even a fix found if you root your phone.

 

[cooden]

As I mentioned in a previous thread i have had my Hero for about 1 week. I primarily need my phone for business. I made the decision to go with Android due to it being google and ease of importing contacts and calendar etc.

I just imported 5,000 contacts into my phone and now if I need to find a contact it takes minutes to pull up.....

I really like this phone HOWEVER the keyboard (way to small to type quickly on) and the in ability to handle 1,000's of contacts is going to force me to trade this phone and head back to the black berry

Is there another application for android that can handle 1,000's of contacts?????

This has to be the STUPIDEST post I have ever seen. First, I doubt you know 5,000 people. Second, if you know 5,000 people, you would have the money to hire an assistant that would follow you around with a laptop filled with all the contacts and dial them for you.

Really, this post is so stupid!

 

[DirtyD]

This has to be the STUPIDEST post I have ever seen. First, I doubt you know 5,000 people. Second, if you know 5,000 people, you would have the money to hire an assistant that would follow you around with a laptop filled with all the contacts and dial them for you.

Really, this post is so stupid!

Agreed...lol

 

[pdragon]

Yeah, that many contacts it wouldn't work well on many small devices. Would probably be better to use a computer to manage them and just sync the ones you immediately or on the road to the phone.

An example of how to do this would be to use your Gmail account to store all your Contacts. Organize them into groups and only sync the groups you need on the road to your phone. If you need to see more of them, you can always log into your Gmail account with the browser to see more of them.

 

[cooolone2]

Something smells fishy?!?!?!

Vocabulary Count
Grade 1 Student = 1,000+ words
Normal Person (Graduate) = 5,000 to 6,000+ words
University Professor = 15,000+ words
Spelling Bee Winners = 30,000+ (as claimed by them)
College Dictionary (Abridged) = 50,000 - 70,000
Total Words in English Language = 250,000+ (Growing)
Dictionary (Un-abridged) with derivatives = 450,000+
Shakespeare used 60,000 words

You're telling me you can remember any one of 5,000 names/contacts to recall from within a contact list? I personally don't think so... Not looking to flame you, but, "IF" it is a customer/business database or contact list "AND" you can remember any name to look up... it would be a hell of a lot easier to use the GOOGLE capability of the phone to get the phone number. That won't work of course if it is the person (contact) within the company. It is possible though to have a large business list, my friend has a company database of 15,000 numbers/customers. But see, that's just it, you can't use a contact list for something so extensive and would NEED to use a database, i.e., MS Access or the like! A Rational Database that could sort through all the names in an instant. Specific function!

I would not consider this a shortcoming of ANY phone to fail at such a task.
Just my own 2 cents... hehe...

 

[Aldo Junior Ao2]

You guys are being unfair to this person. I totally agree that this phone can't handle his problem, why cus it can't handle my 10,000 gtalk contacts. I am mad that i can only chat with only 4,000 of them at a time. This phone is weak. HEHE mesa made a funny.

 

[nathanotis]

I don't see anything wrong with this post. I can imagine a salesperson who never deletes a contact could easily amass 5k in contacts over time.

 

[CMank]

This has to be the STUPIDEST post I have ever seen. First, I doubt you know 5,000 people. Second, if you know 5,000 people, you would have the money to hire an assistant that would follow you around with a laptop filled with all the contacts and dial them for you.

Really, this post is so stupid!

Agree.

 

[BentBarrels]

Wow. Wasn't expecting that kind of reaction...I am a Realtor in Minnesota. I generate 200-300 leads a month on my website. From there they automatically import into my real estate database that I use.

With my Blackberry 8330 i would just export the contacts into outlook and then synch outlook with the blackberry. This process took maybe 4 minutes.

The blackberry easily handled my 5,000+ contacts. So in the morning before hitting the road I would goto my real estate database and print out the 40-50 people i needed to call that day and then when driving around during the day i would look at that list....and then goto my blackberry address book and pull up the name.

I actually would think a LOT of people in sales would have 100's if not thousands of contacts.

Guess I need to head back to the blackberry. I was really hoping to get 1 super phone to handle everything (music, video, business stuff) but looks like i will have to go back to the blackberry since it appears to be much better at handling contacts, emails, and sms.

Anybody know if the iphone can handle 1000's of contacts?

it bums me out that android can not do this...would have been nice to have synch capability from my google apps account

 

[nathanotis]

It's a young OS... Rim has been cranking out 'berries for a long time. When Android is as old as the berry OS, I expect we'll all be amazed.

I'm glad I don't have that many contacts (for many reasons). The Hero IS my super-phone.

 

[AmericanHero]

You should consider a netbook with built in broadband via Sprint or Verizon. The need for 5000 contacts on a phone is ridiculous. You are your own worst enemy here. It's a phone! Unrealistic expectations will lead you down the path of disappointment every time friend. It's a phone, not a SQL Server. What was the reason you left the Blackberry?

 

[BentBarrels]

Why is it an unreasonable expectation to have 5,000 contacts when my blackberry already was handling it easily?

I switched to the HERO as i wanted a phone that could play music and browse the internet...My curve sucked at music and browsing internet

So now I am researching the new 9700 bold 2 and iphone...

 

[kennyidaho]

Blackberries are devices built around business people. Basically right now you have a Lamborghini but your pissed because it can not haul 2 tons of dirt like your old Ford F-350.

I would also say that people who do have 5000 contacts are statistical outliers and are probably not considered a whole lot when the majority of companies design phones. Though I wish you luck on your quest to find one super device to do everything but fact of the matter is (in my opinion) there is not one on the market. I have a dedicated netbook for heavy web browsing, a 120GB Ipod for music, and then the Hero. To me the hero, is a great media player and web browser but it will never be as good as an ipod or laptop for those tasks.

 

[pgvelez]

Not that Bentbarrels needs me my defense but either some of you are either plain contentious, very short-sighted or just plain stupid. It seems like a lot of people who frequent these message boards are young and immature people who can't possibly believe that there are those of us who might know more than 50 people. I am a tax accountant with nearly 1500 contacts and counting. Many salespeople and business owners accumulate contacts and never delete them because they may represent potential clients or people we want to maintain contact with. Some of you guys need to think before you react.

 

[kutsushita]

Not that Bentbarrels needs me my defense but either some of you are either plain contentious, very short-sighted or just plain stupid. It seems like a lot of people who frequent these message boards are young and immature people who can't possibly believe that there are those of us who might know more than 50 people. I am a tax accountant with nearly 1500 contacts and counting. Many salespeople and business owners accumulate contacts and never delete them because they may represent potential clients or people we want to maintain contact with. Some of you guys need to think before you react.

the point... you just missed it. best bet is a netbook with sprint wireless access card... end of story.

 

[kennyidaho]

Not that Bentbarrels needs me my defense but either some of you are either plain contentious, very short-sighted or just plain stupid. It seems like a lot of people who frequent these message boards are young and immature people who can't possibly believe that there are those of us who might know more than 50 people. I am a tax accountant with nearly 1500 contacts and counting. Many salespeople and business owners accumulate contacts and never delete them because they may represent potential clients or people we want to maintain contact with. Some of you guys need to think before you react.

I agree with your point of having thousands of contacts. I have several hundred and it grows weekly as I get more clients. However I have no need to have those hundreds of contacts at my finger tips 24/7. I archive them in a contact group in google which I do not sync with my phone. Everyones situation is different maybe he just needs to go back to blackberry there is nothing wrong with that if it works for him.

 

[BentBarrels]

I do have google apps, contacts, gmail, etc

I went to the HTC hero due to google based operating system. Doesn't seem for a company like google that having 100's of contacts should be a problem for the phone???

I restored my phone back to factory settings and took off the synch of my google contacts...I just put in the 50 or so people that i talk to a lot...not ideal...but not sure what else to do....

 

[kennyidaho]

After working most of the night to get the SDK installed (stupid ubuntu) I've started diving into the Android documentation. Turns out that SQLite is the database engine used in Android. So a rational database does exist and is available to developers

I am wondering if HTC's modifications (pulling facebook, text/email history) causing the problems. So I wonder how 5000 contacts might be handled on a device without senseUI.

Unless I am mistaken the contacts manager could be replaced by something else if wanted (just like handcent/chomp can replace the stock sms app - Android is built to provide this flexibility) the documentation does state that there are certain restrictions - but I have not discovered what those security restrictions are. Maybe someone just needs to build a better contact manager.

 

[premgyani]

Guys. I too have 5000 contacts. I am the VP of sales for a international company and need access to our whole database of contacts that reside in Salesforce.com. Filtering the contacts or using a netbook of some sort is no good when you need to make contact with an international contact from the airport lounge minutes before departure.

The question is valid and should not be so easily dismissed if Android / HTC want to break into the corporate market with their flagship phone.

Here is my way around it;

1) Disable the contact sync when I am on the road. I am guessing that Android has to re-index the contacts every time it re-syncs with Google contacts.

2) I downloaded the 'Power Search' ( v 1.0.5 ) from the market and use this. I disabled all search groups except 'Contacts' in the preferences screen.

If I can remember the name of the person I want to make contact with ( my brain can only handle around 200 ir so ), then I use the Android phone application.

If I cannot remember the name or just have the company name, city or whatever in my small brian, I use the Power Search Utility. It's fractionally slower but seems to work very well.

One more thing. I run 'Advanced Task Manager' to keep my Hero's memory clean. Can't explain what it does but I have noticed that if I set it to automatically close apps every 30 minutes, things do speed up in searches.

By the way, I am hoping that Android 2.0's global search utility will solve some of these problems.

Now... On the the Blackberry. I got rid of mine around 12 months ago, moved to the iPhone 3G and then ( after 6 months of frustration ) moved on to the Hero. I have to be frank and say that I am missing the Blackberry Bold. It's business friendly features are incredible and it deservedly sits in pole position in it's market.

But I got jealous of all the sexy applications that were available elsewhere and got very depressed when the Blackberry touch screen was released. That's a technology going nowhere.

For me, I will stick loyally to the Hero for now hoping that HTC will choose it fit to release Android 2.0 soon. If not, I shall consider the Droid or even wait to see how Apple reacts to the new competition.

One thing I know. If I am not happy with a handset, it's amazingly easy to root / jailbreak any phone and get back around 80% of it's 'new' value at within 6 months on e-Bay !

Prem

 

[cooden]

My position at my company also involves me having thousands of contacts as well. I also use Salesforce.com on a daily basis. It is ridiculous that you need to have 5,000 contacts on a phone--you obviously do not know how to manage your contacts. I keep a couple hundred of the key contacts on my phone and then arrange them into their respective groups. I came to the Hero after being a Crackberry user for years--now I could never go back to Blackberry after using the Hero. Like stated before, Netbook with an aircard is the easiest solution.

 

[Tu_Much_TaleNt]

I don't understand how you can tell someone how they want to organize there contacts. I think its a fair assumption to assume the hero could handle the mass amount of contacts. The train of thought I am sure is

If my my blackberry can do it I know my hero can, I mean the hero does so many things well I can completely understand some peoples expectations,

At the moment the hero is limited but I am sure a software fix can do a lot for the business power users

 

[dbpaddler]

because this is the internet and many are shortsighted as to how people's personal needs for a mobile device might differ from theirs. I have about 1500 contacts in mine. Many are old, but I get surprised when those old ones pop up again, and you never know when x knows y, someone switches jobs, and so on.

People say Android isn't a business device, but it very well better be. If you want big companies to take notice and develop software, business use will drive it. We're working with a company that will make the first CRM app for Android, not a web based solution. They must see value in it especially when it's currently on six phones from three different carriers in the US alone.

Google is extremely limited. Features and functions people took for granted in previous smartphones are absent in Android. Android phones are wanna be smartphones plain and simple. They have more in common with their dumbphone counterparts like the Instinct, except they can be customized. So Google needs to get their butt in gear if they want to draw the business crowd, and they obviously do. Why else would you make Exchange support native in 2.0? Why would you add task support? Why would you have google docs support (yet you still can't sync them)? The people with the largest voices are the business crowd, not some kid that thinks he knows how and how not a phone should be used and proceeds to verbalize it like a 15yr old on some forum.

Google help forums (and other forums like this) are full of functionality complaints from people that are used to Outlook, PalmOS, real smartphones and the like. If you're coming from a dumbphone or just have simplistic needs, then you have no clue how people have used their phones in the past and really have an opinion that doesn't hold water.

 

[pdragon]

I do have google apps, contacts, gmail, etc

I went to the HTC hero due to google based operating system. Doesn't seem for a company like google that having 100's of contacts should be a problem for the phone???

I restored my phone back to factory settings and took off the synch of my google contacts...I just put in the 50 or so people that i talk to a lot...not ideal...but not sure what else to do....

Ben, did you see my suggestion for organzing your Contacts in Gmail and only syncing the ones you immediately needed to the phone? You can choose specifically which groups sync to the phone so you're not grabbing all of them.

Then just use the browser if you need to see all your Contacts in Gmail.