Contacts and Voice Recognition settings

[MoldCAD]

Hi Guys,

The following questions are probably more Android-related in general, and not SGSII - specific. But as the SGSII is my first Android smartphone, please bear it with me and try to explain everything in layman's terms

1. In Contacts, what exactly does the "Merge with Google" option do (apart from displaying that little "g" icon next to a contact)? Also, after using it, I don't see to be able to revert the action - is it still possible?

2. Is it only possible to synchronize my Contacts with my Google account after the above mentioned "Merge with Google" action has been applied, or are they completely separate? E.g. if I add a new contact to my Phone, will it get synchronized with Google even if I don't Merge it with Google first?

3. Is it possible to also synchronize other contacts (like those from Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) in order to store them on my Google account for safety reasons?

4. Does the Google contacts synchronization work also the other direction, i.e. after I edit My Contacts on my Google accont, can I just use "Synchronize" in the SGSII to update the Phone contacts? Or do I need to delete all Contacts from my Phone first, and only then synchronize to the current Google version?

5. I write messages/emails in English as often as I do in Polish. When I set Polish as the input language in Voice Recognition settings, and happen to compose a message in English using voice recognition, it often happens some Polish words are generated (and vice versa). I thought it would be logical if - apart from the global input language setting - the keyboard input language settings (changeable via the Space bar) - would eliminate the problem (ie. the VR engine should expect and use only English words when the keyboard is set to Eng, and so on) - but it doesn't seem to work... Do I really need to change the global Voice Recognition Language setting each time I plan to dictate a message in a selected language?

Looking forward to your answers,

Piotr

[Doomed]

1. In Contacts, what exactly does the "Merge with Google" option do (apart from displaying that little "g" icon next to a contact)? Also, after using it, I don't see to be able to revert the action - is it still possible?

If you have two of the same contacts, say one on the phone and your google one, all the info will then come under one contact instead of two

2. Is it only possible to synchronize my Contacts with my Google account after the above mentioned "Merge with Google" action has been applied, or are they completely separate? E.g. if I add a new contact to my Phone, will it get synchronized with Google even if I don't Merge it with Google first?

You need to add the contact to google for it to sync with google In other words just save it to google when you create it instead of to you phone

3. Is it possible to also synchronize other contacts (like those from Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) in order to store them on my Google account for safety reasons?

Don't think you can unless you add the info into your phone instead. But you can merge facebook contacts with google, but once the facebook user of that contact decides to remove any info from their page it will also be removed from your phone too.

4. Does the Google contacts synchronization work also the other direction, i.e. after I edit My Contacts on my Google accont, can I just use "Synchronize" in the SGSII to update the Phone contacts? Or do I need to delete all Contacts from my Phone first, and only then synchronize to the current Google version?

Yes, so if you add a new number via your google account on the computer it will sync to your phone showing that number


This seemed correct to me at the time of writing, I take no responsibly for any bad info that I may have made up just so I could have a laugh at someone I do not know. If the said phone turns into the Terminator I maybe interested as I have some new missions for it

[MoldCAD]

Thanks @Doomed!

Just to make sure I got you right, let me re-iterate what I've done so far, and ask you what steps it will take to achieve my goal (which is: having the same contacts with phone numbers, email addresses and other info on both my Phone and the PC):

1. I used "Merge with Google" and then "Synchronize" in my phone contacts menu, and all my phone contacts appeared on my Google account (there were none to start with)

2. From my Google account, I imported my PC contacts (via csv file); the 2 sets added up nicely

3. I'm now working on some housekeeping in My Contacts in my Google account (eliminating double entries, etc.)

4. When I'm ready, I'll export all the contact back to my PC in a csv file (this is the easy part)

5. Now the part I'm uneasy about: How do I replace the current, incomplete contacts in my Phone with the cleaned up and complete set from my Google account? The intuition tells me to:

- first, delete all "Google-merged" contacts from the phone (cause if I don't, I'd expect they would be sent to my Google account again),
- then, use the "Synchronize" option on the phone (will it get all my Google account Contacts to the Phone, just like it worked in the opposite direction?)

Will it achieve my goal? Please confirm, or correct me!

[Doomed]

You could delete all contacts on the phone then re-sync with google, that would work, but I thought changes make to your contacts via google would overwrite the ones on the phone too, but I could be wrong don't want to undo your hard work

[MoldCAD]

Ha! So we're still unsure about it... Any synchronization mechanism I used so far (like between 2 PCs, A and B) will have the direction to be defined: either you copy anything from A to B which has not been on B, or you copy anything from B to A which has not been on A...Another option with PC synching apps is each time you synchronize, both direction copy takes place and both A and B will end up with the same contents. How is it supposed to work on the Android smartphone, where no synchronization options are available?

Anyway, before I try it, I'm gonna make several copies of my full Contacts database I now have on my Google account...

[Doomed]

Ha! So we're still unsure about it...

Yep because I've never thought about it before, apart from when I deleted an email address off of my phone it disappeared from my google account I remembered not to do that again