[personal profile] squirmelia
Just wondering about how many people actually bother syncing the contact list on their smart phone with their computers.
[Poll #1858057]

What counts as "syncing"?

Date: 2012-08-03 10:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] psych0naut.livejournal.com
I was wondering about the option "Not automatically, but I do sync them sometimes". Would that include opening your phone's contact list manually typing the data into your computer's address book? Because I have done that (or going the other way, from computer to phone) on occasion.

Re: What counts as "syncing"?

Date: 2012-08-03 10:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] squirmelia.livejournal.com
Manually typing them in, ooh yes, good point.

Date: 2012-08-03 10:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] eggwhite.livejournal.com
Explanation of the "Something else that I'll explain": I have multiple address books on my PC, some of which get synced to my phone, some of which don't. I do that to avoid burying the contact list I *want* on my phone with contact details for people I will never, ever want to speak to.

Date: 2012-08-03 10:51 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] squirmelia.livejournal.com
That makes sense. I have multiple address books, and I suppose I might access some of them through various means on my phone, but never actually sync them at all. If I save someone's phone number/address/whatever on my phone, it just stays on my phone, and doesn't join the rest of my address books.

Date: 2012-08-03 10:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kevandotorg.livejournal.com
I'm probably being a bit sentimental and 20th century, but I remain a little baffled by the idea that I would want a small, vulnerable device to be permanently logged in to my primary email address.

Date: 2012-08-03 10:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] squirmelia.livejournal.com
Indeed. I should probably think more carefully about the security on mine.

Date: 2012-08-03 11:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] psych0naut.livejournal.com
How does one "permanently log in" to an e-mail address?

Date: 2012-08-03 12:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kevandotorg.livejournal.com
Unless I've misunderstood it, or if my phone model was a quirk, Android phones insist on a Gmail address when you first activate them, and the email app remains connected to it, alerting you to incoming messages. There doesn't seem to be a way to password lock it - anybody picking up your phone can, if the screen's not locked or if they can get past that, just open the email app to start using your email account.

I know "physical object" isn't a bad line of security, and I also carry around a small piece of jagged metal that unlocks the building I keep all my stuff in, but this bothered me enough to use a secondary account and just check Gmail through the phone's browser.

Date: 2012-08-03 12:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purplegril.livejournal.com
Andriod and googlemail do it for me without me having to do a suncing process of any sort. This is why having to use a non-Android phone would be a total no-no for me and posing my phone never means losing my contacts. It's a huge deal to me.

Date: 2012-08-03 12:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purplegril.livejournal.com
Wow, so many typos that is actually unreadable, I'll try again.

Android and googlemail do it for me without me having to do a syncing process of any sort. This is why having to use a non-Android phone would be a total no-no for me and losing my phone never means losing my contacts. It's a huge deal to me.

Date: 2012-08-03 12:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crispygoth.livejournal.com
Same for me.. I also like the fact that if someone emails/IMs me a phone number or address, I can just copy/paste it into googlemail and have it synced to my phone.

Date: 2012-08-03 12:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pseudomonas.livejournal.com
Am I seriously the only one without a smartphone?

Date: 2012-08-03 01:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pir.livejournal.com
No, there are one or two more luddites still around. I didn't think it'd be particularly useful... until work gave me one and I haven't looked back.

Date: 2012-08-06 09:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
I'm sure I would find it useful, I just can't justify the extra cost at the moment. I use my dimphone for texting, calls and taking photos, and that costs me about £5 per month. Stepping up to a smartphone would be a hefty extra hit.

Date: 2012-08-06 09:39 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pir.livejournal.com
I get unlimited texts, unlimited data and 250 mins of talk for 10 quid/month (giffgaff). Depends what you consider hefty
(and even before I had a smartphone I was using data for IMAP, gmaps, etc, and paying more than that).

Date: 2012-08-06 09:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
That's not too bad: how much was your phone (and what is it), if you don't mind me asking?

Date: 2012-08-06 09:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pir.livejournal.com
My phone is a Galaxy Nexus and work gave it to me at xmas, so didn't cost me anything.

Date: 2012-08-06 10:18 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] undyingking.livejournal.com
Mm, I guess that's like 300 quid's worth or so? Well, I've got a birthday coming up…

Date: 2012-08-06 10:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pir.livejournal.com
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Galaxy-Nexus-16GB-Smartphone/dp/B005XYU45E/

The Galaxy Nexus is nice because it's supported directly by Google (so already has Jelly Bean, the most recent Android OS release) and is generally a great phone but some people don't like the fact it doesn't have a microsd slot so you can't add extra storage to it. 16Gb is enough for me, but not enough for much of my music but then I have a tiny mp3 player for that (40Gb of storage). It also has a rather large screen, M doesn't like mine because it's too big for her hands so I found her a used Nexus S instead (~GBP150 on ebay with the usual be careful about what you're buying used on ebay, particularly for screen scratches).

There's a lot of variety in Android phones on the market which is good but can make choosing one first somewhat challenging. Some of the cheaper ones seem appealing but in practice don't have enough internal storage or a fast enough CPU/GPU to run the most recent Android releases (such as the HTC Desire). Phones that ship with ICS (android 4.0) or are supported by CyanogenMod 9 are a reasonable starting point.

Date: 2012-08-03 01:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pir.livejournal.com
Android + Google contacts is very easy and makes sure I have my contacts around even if I forget or lose my phone. Also means I can enter contact details on my computer where it's easier to c&p or type on a real keyboard and they automagically appear on my phone. I sync everything but I have a "phone" group and set that to be what is displayed by default.

Before I had a smartphone I used to sync with AddressBook on my mac to have a backup.

Date: 2012-08-03 04:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nickmurdoch.livejournal.com
I didn't think my phone synced contacts but having read the rest of the responses here about Android (which I also use) I'm starting to wonder if that's not the case!

I don't have an application on my computer that can access whereever they're maybe being synced to, at any rate.

Date: 2012-08-03 06:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purplegril.livejournal.com
I don't know if you can use Android without logging into gmail, but I assume you can.

If you do, it simply backs up your contacts automatically into your gmail contacts. It's not a phone app of any sort as such.

There are Android phones that do a separate phone sync as well, of course, that would do it via an app.

I like it because I can log into my gmail anywhere I have internet and all my contacts are there, it's awesome!

My "system"

Date: 2012-08-03 10:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] erinaf.livejournal.com
Phone numbers are in my phone and I think my phone merged them into gmail automatically.

Home addresses I have in a spreadsheet in google docs that I can open on my phone.

Email addresses are in gmail which I think autosynched with the phone but I only use the gmail client to send emails so I'm not 100% sure on that.

So basically google has all my data in some form or another that I can access via any device

Date: 2012-08-05 12:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] psyfira.livejournal.com
I think it's optional but turned on by default; you can add a Google account to the phone but turn off syncing in the accounts and settings section of the phone so I'd assume that'd prevent GMail from using them too.

i ticked no but technically my contacts are synced to Google, I just don't use them for anything other than the phone. (there was a reason why but I forget what it was now, could've been something to do with getting contact's birthdays onto the calendar?)

Date: 2012-08-04 12:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] beingjdc.livejournal.com
Actual answer "It's meant to but it isn't working at the moment and I have got around to figuring out why".

Date: 2012-08-04 06:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] solitarywalker.livejournal.com
i don't have a smart phone, but my computer automatically syncs my contacts to my iPod whenever i sync my music.

Date: 2012-08-06 12:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] tonight-we-fly.livejournal.com
I've never knowingly done this, but my phone strangely seems to know the e-mail addresses and/or telephone numbers of some people that I'm certain have never given them to me. However, the coverage seems remarkably sporadic, and many more are clearly not there.

One day I intent to read the remainder of the instruction manual of my phone. I think I have about 140 pages to go.

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