In the Google account within the Contacts app on Android (more specifically, Motorola Droid Razr), you can select which contact groups you want to show on your phone. Fantastic, I said. Now I can only show those people who are truly relevant to me and ignore all the rest who, while important for historical purposes, clutter up my search when looking for a friend I want to call for lunch.
There are some problems with this. The one I am about to describe comes from an attempt to add a young lady's number into my phone.
I did. I entered it. Name, phone number, e-mail, even some notes. "Save," I pressed. And she was nowhere to be found. Did it again, just in case I hit "Cancel" (which, I did, btw, on this second attempt, forcing me to make a third attempt.
I went into GMail to compose a mail and when I began to type her name, voila!, her name came up. Twice, to be precise. She was obviously in contacts, but yet no form of search could find her.
It dawned on me. I had restricted my contact groups. I looked, and sure enough, when I turned on "My Contacts" (or was it "Other Contacts?" I don't know; I click lots of check marks), my lady friend's name showed up.
Moral of this story is, when designing a record system, provide a reasonable default that takes into account the user's current settings. I should have been able to at the very least select a default. Or perhaps better, Google should have auto-created (as it does with Starred Favorites) and "Added via Phone" group. That way, you know where your new contact came from.
