Android isn't very intuitive when it comes to saving stuff

[bennylava]

Maybe someone can help me out with this. I'm using Android Gingerbread 2.3.5. I'm not going to name the phone because every time I do someone moves it to a forum that nobody ever goes to and I never get any replies.

So the typical AT&T phone seems to have 3 sources of storage memory. As does mine. That would be the internal phone storage, the SIMM card, and then the SD card that is user added. I'm using a 16Gb one right now. Recently the wife got a new phone and I needed to take over her old phone. Since mine was dead. So I simply swapped my SIMM card, and my SD card over into the desired phone. But for some reason, android decided not to save any of my numbers and never ask me to make a backup or anything. Its not like Windows when something new happens. Windows is like 100000 times more intuitive than android. With windows, every time you install a new storage memory device, it asks you what you want to do with it. It helps you along a bit. Or go to save a piece of data, it conveniently asks you where you would like to put this new piece of data.

This serves two purposes. It helps you remember where its at, cause you actually had to draw your attention to it, and it organizes it away for you for later use. With android, who knows? The dam files aren't even appropriately named. Android doesn't ask you any questions or give you any help at all with regards to what you want to do with your stored data. Such as phone numbers and pics taken with the camera. It just slaps them in some folder that isn't even named right so you don't even know where to find them. Ugh. So frusrtating.

And then, when you plug in a new card with new phone numbers, the stupid phone program never asks you if you want to import all your old phone numbers off the card. You're just screwed.

 

[EvilBoz]

Typically, an Android phone will sync your contacts to a Gmail account. If you use the same Gmail account on the new phone, you should get your contacts after the sync operation completes. As for the numbers stored on the SIM card, those are available immediately, or at least that is the experience I've had with the four Android phones I've owned.
Make sure that you are using the same Gmail account on the new phone that was used on the old one. Also, check if there are any errors when the phone tries to sync.

 

[Damenc]

It's a phone OS, all in all, it's still more intuitive then IOS Hard to compare Windows OS to a phone OS. At least with Android, there's apps that can make that easier or can be improved in the future.

 

[lunatic59]

Like internal storage, there are several places Android can save contact information. The least desirable would be the sim card, since that stores the least amount of details. You also have your choice of storing contacts as purely phone contacts (stored on the phone only) and Google contacts which are sync'ed with the gmail account.

If your contacts were primarily phone-only contacts and your phone dies, without a backup, the contacts are lost.

 

[Damenc]

I've never practiced saving on my SIM card, it's really limited to how you can save too. I just sync with Outlook for calendar and contacts, never had an issue even when I went from iphone to android.

 

[bennylava]

It's a phone OS, all in all, it's still more intuitive then IOS Hard to compare Windows OS to a phone OS. At least with Android, there's apps that can make that easier or can be improved in the future.

I see what you mean but they could have tried a little harder. A simple pop up window saying something like "Where would you like to save this?" would have sufficed. They need that window for every last scrap of data on the phone. Cause I'd put it ALL on my micro SD card. And then let the phone numbers be backed up to gmail just in case. It could be so simple. Yet its convoluted.

 

[chanchan05]

I see what you mean but they could have tried a little harder. A simple pop up window saying something like "Where would you like to save this?" would have sufficed. They need that window for every last scrap of data on the phone. Cause I'd put it ALL on my micro SD card. And then let the phone numbers be backed up to gmail just in case. It could be so simple. Yet its convoluted.

It probably depends on the phone, but its dependent as well as how you got your contacts into the phone in the first place. For example, did the program you use to sync your contacts fron Outlook to phone support writing into the Gmail partition of the phone's contact memory? Or was it only capable of writing into the onboard storage that does not sync with Gmail?

By default, if you manually enter a contact, it should ask you where to save. At least all my devices were like that initially. Second, my advice is if you are fine with syncing to cloud, sync Outlook directly to Gmail for contacts. That way all you have to do on a new phone is login yo your Gmail and all your contacts will be there. Not to mention that all new contacts you add onto the phone is automatically added on Outlook as well.