Handcent/GoSMS ICS Facebook contact issue

[jaxter25]

Hi Guys, been reading the forums for a while, but only just signed up.

I know similar problems have been covered in different topics, but none were really this specific.
I don't believe this is particularly application specific, so i'm sorry if this is in the wrong category.

-I store most of my contacts on my gmail account.
-These were originally initialized by exporting facebook contacts using a greasemonkey script and importing them into gmail.
-Facebook has since disallowed this, so any of my facebook friends who added their mobile numbers after this date are synced to my phone by facebook sync, but not stored on gmail.
-After updating to ICS, handcent and gosms will only display these initial gmail contacts when clicking the + contact button and none of the facebook synced contacts.
-The gmail contacts do also not have facebook pictures, despite being linked to a facebook account.
-If i use the stock messaging app and click + contact, it displays all the contacts in 'people' .

-I have read elsewhere that there were problems with an sql db relating to the contacts, but the posts i saw were dated before the new year, so i would have thought any issues were now resolved.
-I have also read that handcent now has "full ics support" .

Does anyone know if this is a known issue, and we're just waiting for some updates, or is this issue specific to me.

Thanks in advance guys.

HTC Sensation Z701e
4.0.3 ICS
HTC Sense 3.6

 

[TheyCallMeBT]

I'll try to come back and see if I can understand the problem more thoroughly. But ICS doesn't support Facebook contact syncing. I think it's an issue of FB vs. Google. But any way, there's a few options to get it to work. Friendcaster, haxsync, Facebook contact-sync (what I use), and syncmypix. I don't think that it will sync their phone numbers that they share on their FB profile. Only the main FB app has access to this-- not the API that the other apps use.

Let me know if that fixes the problem and then what else remains and I'll see if I can help. You might find help in the Galaxy Nexus thread since we've been dealing with the new contact issues that ICS brought since it came out last year.

 

[jaxter25]

Apologies for the late reply, I've got a lot of work on atm.

I had heard of haxsync, I just forgot to look into it. This wasn't really my main concern, I can look into the facebook picture issue later.

For most people I can imagine this isn't really much of a problem, because they probably manually add their contacts via phone or gmail, but I've just realised a majority of my contacts seem to come from facebook

I imagined in my head that the 'people' app was a sort of database on the phone that gmail, facebook, and other syncing apps added to, allowing all other apps to access the same contact data, but I'm starting to think that this probably isn't the case.

I guess what I really need is for handcent/gosms to be able to access all of the 'people' contacts somehow, or at least copy them to a place that other apps can access them, but I'm guessing this isn't possible.

I originally thought this was a feature I lost after the ics update, but I'm startin to think it never existed in the first place.

Sorry for my lack of understanding, I've really not had time to look into the facebook API or how the SDK deals with contacts.

Thanks for your help.

 

[jaxter25]

Just an update of something I've noticed about the facebook added contacts

I have contact george smith.
I've never added him to my phone or gmail, so facebook has added him.
I can click him in people and view his phone number, call him/send a msg.
If I try to edit his contact info, it doesn't display his phone number anywhere.
I can't see him in gosms or handcent.
I can save him to sim, and then he will show up in these apps.

So this is a workaround, but I don't really want to do this for every contact.

 

[Daemos1000]

I found a good solution for this!

1. go into contacts and use import/export to export all contacts to sim card
2. remove your facebook account from accounts
3. import all contacts from sim card
4. re add facebook account

step 4 is just to get the pictures back but the contacts are now all stored on your phone or google as well once you import them from the sim card.