Help How do you get non-blurry contact pictures

[Cleargrey]

I could've sworn I saw the solution somewhere on these Desire pages but I've lost them.

I'm trying to stop my pictures from becoming blurry after it has synced up with Google. Is there a way to do this or am I all out of luck?

 

[d.knight99]

Hmm I've wondered about this too...

The facebook profile pictures that have linked to the contacts on my Phone look really pixellated when you're in a call. They're alright as little contact thumbnails but when they're scaled up they look terrible!

I would also like to know a solution if anyone knows?

 

[koldtoft]

signed!

Was a problem on my hero (Android 1.6) and now on my Desire (Android 2.1).

I only always had blurry contact pics

Fix it fix it fix it fix it fix it !

 

[Cleargrey]

I could've sworn lekky had a solution...

 

[thesimplesimon]

Bump from me too. I would like to know how to sort this out too.

 

[thesimplesimon]

Bump!

 

[Trigano]

New at this but this sounds as though you only have the thumbnail picture on your Desire.

Looking on my SD card I have a thumbnail of the contact and the bigger picture in a different folder (don't use Facebook et.al so no idea what you get when you sync), my first check would be to look at what you have on the SD card.

 

[d.knight99]

Ah ok so you're thinking the contact's picture is synced with the thumbnail, not the main image?

Makes sense... anyone know how to batch edit this? I don't wanna have to manually go through and reset them all, only to have my hard work undone when facebook updates the contacts with peoples new profile pics!

 

[Trigano]

That's my feeling - I know they're linked because of the sizes, thumbnail is 28k and the picture is 680k which sounds about right, no idea at the moment how they're linked.

 

[lekky]

Oh god, there was the same problem with the Hero. I believe a solution/workaround was found, but I have no idea how to find it. You gus could try doing a search in the Hero section using keywords to try and dig up the thread, thats the best I can offer

 

[koldtoft]

Oh god, there was the same problem with the Hero. I believe a solution/workaround was found, but I have no idea how to find it. You gus could try doing a search in the Hero section using keywords to try and dig up the thread, thats the best I can offer

I think this is the post you are thinking about.
http://androidforums.com/support-troubleshooting/17728-poor-contact-picture-quality-caller-id.html

And that would make this the only known solution.

Disclaimer: This refers to the Hero, which suffers from the same problem. Hopefully this solution works on the Droid too.

I was just playing around with this for a while, and I think I know what's going on. More importantly, I have a fix, albeit an annoying one. bruceo touched on it with his reference to the cloud and disabling sync. Google Contacts images are natively 96x96. Enlarged contact photos on the Hero (when a call is inbound/outbound) look to be roughly 210x210.

I put a 320x480 image on my card (Hero's native res) and made that a 210x210 contact image using the default crop square on the phone. It looked fine at first, but 5 minutes later it looked horrible.

I suspect Google Contacts is syncing with the phone, but at the same time it's downscaling the photo to fit within the 96x96 Google Contacts constraint. The next time your phone and Google Contacts communicate, the filesizes don't match, so voila... latest timestamp wins and your phone pulls the new image from Google Contacts. Now your contacts list (on the phone) is referencing a 96x96 image for a 210x210 display... and the end result is ugly.

If you disable syncing between your phone and Google Contacts (Settings>Data Synchronization>Google>Contacts - uncheck), the image will NOT be overwritten. Of course the downside is you will need to make any future changes in both locations. But hey, at least your pictures won't look horrible.

 

[koldtoft]

Confirmed, do not sync your contacts with google, and problem is fixed.

I sync my contacts with Exchange (and Exchange does not ruin contact pictures), so I can live without the google contact sync, but I hope they fix this soon, as my Exchange sync is depended on me having my current job (And that is not permanent)

On some phones (I think on hero) and surely on Nokia N97 (not an Android phone) you have a setting for solving server/client conflicts. If you chose (phone always wins and not server always wins), maybe it won’t resize the contact photos. Just a taught, not tested.

EDIT: I have had some contact pcitures go blurry on me, both some taken with the HTC desire camera and some I stored on the SD card from my PC, taken with another digital camera. Both went blurry on me. I have added another taken with the HTC desire, that is perfect. I stretched out the crop tool as far as it could go, I dont know if that is what makes the diffrence. However not syncing contacts with gool will not fix this issue 100%

 

[radian]

Here's the workaround for HTC Desire (and probably for other devices with Sense UI):

You should create additional contact and save it in phone memory. Contact info can be empty and it's not important what name you'll choose.
Then you should add a photo for this contact.

Next step is to create a link in People between this new contact and that one stored in Gmail account. By pressing Menu key during link creation you have access to options to choose name and photo for this "linked contact". You should choose photo from "Phone".

The result is you have high quality photo in your caller ID!
Also, you have duplicate contacts: one from Google account (but it's still synchronized!! , second from your phone internal memory. But it's not a problem - you won't see those duplicates as long as they're linked.

 

[willHe]

Here's the workaround for HTC Desire (and probably for other devices with Sense UI):

You should create additional contact and save it in phone memory. Contact info can be empty and it's not important what name you'll choose.
Then you should add a photo for this contact.

Next step is to create a link in People between this new contact and that one stored in Gmail account. By pressing Menu key during link creation you have access to options to choose name and photo for this "linked contact". You should choose photo from "Phone".

The result is you have high quality photo in your caller ID!
Also, you have duplicate contacts: one from Google account (but it's still synchronized!! , second from your phone internal memory. But it's not a problem - you won't see those duplicates as long as they're linked.

This has solved the problem for me. Only thing to add (probably an obvious point to most) you need to delete the contact picture from the google contact before the phone contact picture will default.

 

[radian]

This has solved the problem for me. Only thing to add (probably an obvious point to most) you need to delete the contact picture from the google contact before the phone contact picture will default.

That's not necessary. You have to choose the default photo manually, by pressing Menu button while being in Link menu (in People app, in contact details view). But you can have different photo from Facebook, another one from Google account, and another from phone memory.

 

[willHe]

That's not necessary. You have to choose the default photo manually, by pressing Menu button while being in Link menu (in People app, in contact details view). But you can have different photo from Facebook, another one from Google account, and another from phone memory.

Ah. Sorry I should have read your original post properly. Thanks.

 

[Torbjorn]

Hello
I just would like to give a feedback to this solution, that I have tested with great success Thanks!


Best from Torbjorn

 

[mikebell]

Hello
I just would like to give a feedback to this solution, that I have tested with great success Thanks!
Best from Torbjorn

You have to admit, though, that's one helluva bodge. There's some kind of flaw somewhere if the google account enforces and is responsible for this dog's dinner.

 

[4ngi3]

great thanks for that. I'm going to leave a useless message of thanks just so I can find this post again in my history if I need to at a later date

 

[4ngi3]

Here's the workaround for HTC Desire (and probably for other devices with Sense UI):

You should create additional contact and save it in phone memory. Contact info can be empty and it's not important what name you'll choose.
Then you should add a photo for this contact.

Next step is to create a link in People between this new contact and that one stored in Gmail account. By pressing Menu key during link creation you have access to options to choose name and photo for this "linked contact". You should choose photo from "Phone".

The result is you have high quality photo in your caller ID!
Also, you have duplicate contacts: one from Google account (but it's still synchronized!! , second from your phone internal memory. But it's not a problem - you won't see those duplicates as long as they're linked.

Hi there, heres one.. what happens if you don't sync to a Google Account? My contacts sync to Outlook so there is only an option to link them to Facebook. Even tho my contacts sync to outlook my photos are still very blurry


edit. ok, just needed to try it, i figured it out, just need to link it to the persons name.

 

[timandra]

Thanks for all the advice. However,

If I were to create a phone account, I would have duplicates when I want to send an sms.. (damn irritating problem in Desire..)

If I choose not to sync with google, it defeats my purpose of having a smart phone.. LOL at the irony.. inconvenience of making changes both in google and desire when the whole purpose of it is to make life easier for me..

Another problem I discovered is that it loves using the profile pictures from facebook (if you sync with it) as the contact photos regardless of the number of times I changed it to the ones I wanted from my phone.

It's stupid to provide the option to choose contact photo from phone when it only takes from facebook... No problem with the contact name though.. Any advice? Thanks..

 

[rebelkc]

If I choose not to sync with google, it defeats my purpose of having a smart phone.. LOL at the irony.. inconvenience of making changes both in google and desire when the whole purpose of it is to make life easier for me..

Exactly my thoughts.

 

[SL4VE]

i just select a diff pic, than go back to original and its crispy clear

 

[4ngi3]

maan this is really annoying..

I have a Favourites widget with all my family members quick dial numbers where I can click on their photo and call them with one touch.

I did the fix for the desire by creating a new contact and linking it with the main contact. It worked for a few days and now its gone back to blurry again. I then unlinked all the photos again and deleted the duplicate contact entry and the photos were all clear again.

Then one of the photos went blurry and I went again to replace the photo in teh contact entry, this photo was clear again and when I went back to my widget, and the rest of them went blurry! This is soo frustrating when are they going to fix this?!

 

[chilli74]

Similar problem and still searching for a permanent solution - I set a picture from the SD card as a Contact photo and it's fine at first, it eventually goes blurry in Favourites. I don't have any gmail contacts.

@timandra - I downloaded an app called SyncMyPix, it seems to use Facebook photos only if you don't have one set from the phone. You can later override a Facebook photo, and it doesn't seem to switch back when you sync contacts Facebook. Seems to work for me, but I've no idea how...