Contact photos gone in messaging apps after Fresh 1.1

[jondiehl]

I rooted my phone and flashed with Fresh 1.1 yesterday, and so far so good, I'm loving it.

However, I noticed that my texting applications, Handcent SMS (as well as the stock messaging app), they no longer showing my contact's photos. It just shows a blank profile image of a head, with a question mark in the upper righthand corner (the stock messaging app is the same, just a dark silhouette instead of contact photo now).

My contact's photos are all still in my phone, they work fine and are viewable in the "people" application (both FB photos and my own photos that I've assigned to contacts), or when I'm making a phone call, but in both messaging applications they don't have images anymore.

I've verified in the Handcent SMS that "Display contact picture" is enabled (I've tried disabling it, then redisplaying it at both sizes... still no luck).

I've also tried uninstalling Handcent SMS, then reinstalling the application from Market, still no luck.

Any suggestions on how to get those back? I'm thinking that since it's not working in either messaging application, that it has something to do with the contact photos database (which I don't even know if something like that exists).

 

[jondiehl]

43 views and nothing?

Well, I figured something out... if I go into my contacts and re-add their contact photo (either via albums or forcing a fresh download of their Facebook profile one), then it now shows up again in the messaging applications.

Anyone have a clue as to why that happened? Something with one of the databases becoming corrupt perhaps?

 

[DFRESH]

you need to re-do it yourself again..that's why...

 

[mysticmead]

I didn't answer because I don't use handcent.. you even said the pics show in the phone and in people, so it was obviously a hancent issue...

 

[jondiehl]

I didn't answer because I don't use handcent.. you even said the pics show in the phone and in people, so it was obviously a hancent issue...

They didn't show in Handcent OR the stock messaging application. So it has to do something with the way the phone stores contact photos and whatever database that writes to.

When I flashed with Fresh 1.1, the photos were gone (from all messaging apps) and what I discovered the other day was that going through each contact and re-doing their contact photo would make them reappear in the messaging applications.

I only did it for a few frequently used contacts that I text alot with, but was hoping for a fix so that I didn't need to edit hundreds of individual contacts.

 

[TheBiles]

Did you sync your contacts with Google after adding their photos? So far 2.1 is the only ROM that has actually remembered my contact photos after a fresh install. I don't know if this is because I wasn't syncing their photos before or what, but I can confirm that their photos are stored on Google Contacts.

 

[mysticmead]

mine shows teh pics in the stock app.. of course I have re-sync'd my contacts..those that are set to have a pic or use facebook do... those that don't have a pic or are not on facebook don't..

based on that I'd say re-sync

 

[jondiehl]

Did you sync your contacts with Google after adding their photos? So far 2.1 is the only ROM that has actually remembered my contact photos after a fresh install. I don't know if this is because I wasn't syncing their photos before or what, but I can confirm that their photos are stored on Google Contacts.

No, I never sync my contacts with Google because it would always fail with the stock ROM when I bought the phone in October. Based on what I read in this forum, it was a common error and wouldn't be corrected until 2.1

My contacts were all "phone" contacts (ported over from my previous phone by the Best Buy tech), and for whatever reason they would never sync to google and force close when it tried.

One of the fixes was to download an app from the market called "ContactSync" which converts phone contacts to google contacts. It did that effectively, but still wouldn't sync with google so I just ended up disabling it and used another app (ExportContacts) to create a file that I could manually import to Google (which I do maybe every few weeks).

Sync rooting the phone and flashing with Fresh 1.1, I never thought to attempt to sync again, but perhaps I'll do that now if it works with this ROM?

 

[jondiehl]

No, I never sync my contacts with Google because it would always fail with the stock ROM when I bought the phone in October. Based on what I read in this forum, it was a common error and wouldn't be corrected until 2.1

As a followup, the error still remains with Contact sync'ing, even after flashing a custom ROM.

I just deleted all contacts from the Gmail website (backing them up first of course), and then re-enabled Contact syncing in my phone's settings (which it showed I hadn't attempted in about 3 months).

Same error message as before:

Sorry!
The process android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.

Oh well, it was worth a shot. I guess I don't get to sync contacts until 2.1 comes out.

 

[mysticmead]

strange.. never got that error on my phone.. all my contacts are google contacts..

when I got my phone it came with the MR update preinstalled.. don't know if that matters or not.

 

[jondiehl]

Not sure about the MR update? I got my phone at launch from Best Buy (10/9/09 I believe it was?) and they transferred my contacts and info from my previous phone (Moto Q9c) to the Hero, which all showed as phone contacts, not google contacts.... causing them not to sync and give the above mentioned error/force close.

I had researched it back then, but noone that was having the problem could ever find a solution to it, even as much as converting them all to google contacts to properly sync (with that downloaded app), but even then it didn't work so I gave up on it until 2.1 is released.

 

[mysticmead]

one option would be to export the contacts as a CSV file and upload that to gmail contacts. then clear all contacts from the phone and try to sync them. that way they start off as google contacts and aren't converted to google contacts by an app.

 

[jondiehl]

Yep, I've tried that too with the exportcontacts app that I mentioned earlier, which is the only way I have them on the Gmail/Contacts website right now.

It works (for name, ph#, address, etc), but alot of the data won't transfer over that way, such as:

-ringer assignments
-contact photos
-facebook linking
-some other custom fields

In the end I thought it was a bigger pain to have to redo alot of those ringers, photo's, and FB links than not have my website based google contacts 100% synced at all times.

If there was a way to easily backup all contacts on the phone, keeping all of that detailed info (including ringer assignments, that one is a biggy for me), then wipe the phone contacts and try to sync it with Google Contacts, I'd give it a shot, but I'm afraid of the aftermath if it wouldn't restore properly. Ugh

 

[mysticmead]

unfortunately, since you can't assign a ring tone or a facebook link in gmail, it can't be saved like that... that is just the nature of an OS owned by google....

 

[jondiehl]

Yeah, I didn't think so.

Anyone know if there's an easy to way to backup Hero contacts (all of them, phone/google/etc) and retain all customized info (like ring tones) to a file on the SD card? If I could do that, then recover it after doing some testing, I might want to wipe my contacts in full on the phone and bring in the Google ones to edit (if I have a few hours of boredom sometime).