My contacts and contact pictures haven't transferred from my S3 to S5. What have I done wrong?

[AC Question]

I used Smart Sync to try to accomplish this task and some of my contacts moved over, but these had a number of google account email addresses. My S3 has a class 4 SD card, whereas my S5 has a class 10 SD card. Have I missed something? Should I download my contacts (on my S3) to my computer and then transfer them to my S5?

 

[Crashdamage]

I don't know anything about Smart Sync but here's a generic method that works for all phones:

Check that all your contacts are saved to your Google (Gmail) account. Any S3 contacts that are not saved to Gmail, export as a .vcf file. Import the .vcf to Gmail contacts. Sync contacts to the S5.

If you do not want to save contacts to Gmail (but highly recommend that you do) export all S3 contacts as a .vcf file and import to the S5.

SD card classes don't matter, it only is a data transfer speed rating. Contacts are not saved on the SD card anyway.

Android since v1.0. Linux user since 2001.

 

[Eric Shepherd]

Never heard of a .vcf file...Way to go Jedi Master...I am but a Paduwan...Everything was saved to my Google account, but much of the contacts, with their pictures did not transfer over...The S3 is a T-Mobile phone and the S5 is an AT&T phone (didn't know if that mattered)...How should I proceed from here, since I've never heard of a .vcf file or how to accomplish that?

 

[Crashdamage]

A .vcf file is the format used for vCard, pretty much the standard format for contacts storage.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

If everything is saved to your Google account then everything would have transferred over to the new S5 as soon as you added the account to it and synced.

If you log into your Gmail account on the web, does all your contacts, including pictures, notes, etc you added show up? If not, then you have not saved all contacts to Gmail. You saved some to phone-only storage or maybe the SIM card. Let me try to make this clear...

I've never owned a Samsung, but on many phones contacts can be stored in 3 places.

1. As Google contacts. These are stored on the phone and synced to your Google account (unless sync is turned off).
2. As Phone contacts. These are stored locally on the phone only and not synced.
3. As SIM contacts. Unlike 1+2 above, only names and one number per name can be stored. No addresses, email info, photos, etc.

Your contacts app probably can be set to display any or all of the above. To see what contacts are stored where, go to: Contacts > Menu (3 dots) > Contacts to display > Select account or location (or similar, your Samsung might be a bit different).

If you find that some of your contacts are saved in Phone storage instead of in your Google account, do: Contacts > Menu > Import/export > Export to storage (or similar). Once you have the Phone-stored contacts exported as a .vcf file import it to Google online. Resync contacts to the phone.

Some phones have a conversion function to make non-Google contacts Google contacts so you don't have to do the export/import routine.

Your user manual covers all this in detail.

What carrier the phones are on has nothing to do with any of this.

Android since v1.0. Linux user since 2001.