Contacts, sync, link - please help...

[radtech]

Ok, I had ann IPhone 3G for a bit over two years and had the contacts just the way I wanted them.
Now I have an HTC Inspire 4G, had it for about 5 weeks and LOVE the phone
BUT
I'm having a heck of a time figuring out how to get the contacts into the phone the way I like.
I'm confused by the whole Google contacts/sync/link thing that the phone wants to do.
I have managed to transfer my contacts from the SIM card to the Inspire and it's pulling some stuff off of Facebook (photos and updates and ???) but I only have a few contacts in Google Contacts.
I know that to do this right I need to get all the IPhone contacts into Google contacts but everytime I manually put one in, the phone asks to link to it and I end up with twice the number of contacts in the phone.
I have no problem with getting all my contacts into Google and the cloud but I wnat to know the best way to go about it.
Should I upload all my IPhone contacts to Google contacts, clear the info from "people" in the phone and start over ? Or what?

Can someone please give me a simplified explanation of how the Google/cloud thing works. And some ideas on how to get the contact info from my old IPhone into the Inspire as intact as possible.

Thanks
Dave

 

[fiercekitty]

Best thing to do is run down to a store w both phones and let them transfer them using the cellbrite.. That way they will show jus as u hav them in iPhone.

As far as u getting them off the SIM.. Iphones can't save numbs to the SIM so that is not an effective way to make sure u get all your contacts transferred to new phone.

When u are in your contacts, hit the menu button and choose "view." That will show u from what syncd accts your contacts are being shown from. If u don't want the Facebook contacts shown..simply uncheck the box next to that acct.

 

[danlib21]

What I had to do to make things "cleaner" and simpler was to have all my contact in Google and then i erased all the contact from phone and sim. Because even though you can uncheck them like fiercekitty said so they dont show up in your people contacts, if you go to write a text for example and you start typing the persons name you will get the same number for the same contact like 4 times. ie, facebook #, Google #, Phone #, Sim #. Just unchecking them from that menu doesnt erase them from the phone it just hides them from appearing in the contact list.

 

[radtech]

Thanks for the replys so far.
I don't remember how I got my contacts off the Iphone. I have a couple of programs that let me strip data from the Iphone w/o going thru ITunes and I have the contacts in a file. But it's an old SIM so it does have contacts from past phones and I am using that SIM in my Inspire for now.
I'm thinking along the lines of putting everything into Google and erasing everything from the phone and sim and SD (if any contacts are stored there) and just letting it sync with Google.
So I think I can get where I want to be but I'm still not completely understanding the difference and functionality of sync and link.

 

[djsmom]

This is the way I understand the 2 terms -

Sync - sync's data from your accounts (google, yahoo, facebook, etc) to the phone itself.
Link - if you have the same contact in multiple accounts, instead of listing them multiple times, you can link the together under one heading.

You can choose which account to sync - I do not want my facebook "friends", twitter follows, etc. to appear in my phone book - I don't want to accidentally call someone I haven't spoken to in 20 years because their phone number is open in facebook. I do have my yahoomail and gmail accounts syncing and I have a lot of the same contacts in them, so I have linked them together.

Import your contacts from your sim card - back everything up to google and delete the sim card contacts - they'll just add clutter. Better yet - get a new 4g sim card.

The nice thing about gmail is that you can restore your contacts to a prior date or time so if you do what I did and wipe out everything when messing around with my contact list on my phone, you can just go back to "about an hour ago".