INFORMAL POLL: Does searching Google Maps search your phone's Contacts?

[RobFreundlich]

Over in the S3 forum, I noted that searching in Google Maps 7 doesn't search my phone's contacts, and user sixty_four replied that it does on his or her phone. That got me wondering what the difference might be. I have come up with two possibilities.

It could be device-specific. I have a Galaxy Note 2, and sixty_four presumably has an S3 (given the location of the discussion. I was only there because of a forums-wide search).

Alternatively, I wonder whether it only searches the Google account in the Contacts/People database. All of my contacts are under a different account.

I think it'd be interesting and useful to gather information to verify this theory. If we can identify a pattern, maybe Google will entertain the idea of fixing the problem. So please, if you're using Google Maps 7, take a few moments and answer the following questions:

1. When you search in Google Maps 7, does it search your device's Contacts?

2. What account are your device's Contacts in?

3. What device are you on?

Thanks!

 

[SpookDroid]

What do you mean by 'search your device's Contacts'? You mean like pulling address information from a contact if available? In any case, I've never seen Google MAPS searching for contacts in any of my devices (Galaxy S2, Note 2, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4). Google Search, however, does search the phone, including apps and contacts.

 

[RobFreundlich]

What do you mean by 'search your device's Contacts'? You mean like pulling address information from a contact if available? In any case, I've never seen Google MAPS searching for contacts in any of my devices (Galaxy S2, Note 2, Galaxy S3, Galaxy S4). Google Search, however, does search the phone, including apps and contacts.

Pulling address information from a contact is exactly what I mean. Some folks over on the S3 forum are claiming that it does that.

The context here is that the old version of Google Navigation (6.14.2) had a Contacts section that listed your contacts so you could, without leaving Maps/Nav, pick a contact's address as a destination. Now that Nav is more tightly integrated into Maps, this option is gone, and so there's no way other than exiting Maps/Nav altogether and going to your Contacts app, to map or navigate to a contact's address. That seems like a basic piece of functionality that is completely missing.

 

[SpookDroid]

It wouldn't surprise me... most Google updates lately seem to take out more features than it improves or adds... From Maps you can't add multiple destinations, they removed the OH-SO-VERY-NECESSARY distance reference scale from the map, they hid options and removed some more. Not truly happy with the late changes.

 

[sixty_four]

...snip...

1. When you search in Google Maps 7, does it search your device's Contacts?

2. What account are your device's Contacts in?

3. What device are you on?

Thanks!

1. Yes. I just tested this with multiple contacts. HOWEVER - one glaring limitation is that the search seems to limit results according to what it seems to think what you want to find. For example, entering my family's surname should return a ton of results but only returns two or three contacts that I interact with most frequently. To find others, I had to enter first names as well.

2. I only have a single account associated with my phone and tablet. So the answer is, my primary account.

3. Verizon Galaxy S3, Nexus 7 (1st gen)

 

[Convert2]

I just noted this abnormality on a recent trip. After updating to the latest Google Maps, if I pull up a contact and select the address, Maps is no longer a choice to map that location, only Waze and AT&T Navigation would come up as choices. Also, if I opened maps and started a search, my contacts no longer came up in search results as they did previously. So I decided to remove all updates from Maps and all functionality returned to normal.