About the People app ............

[TnTexas]

So I'm in the process of entering everyone in my address book into my Thunderbolt. Problem is when I open the People app now, instead of looking at a short list of people I usually call, I'm faced with a long list of contacts (titled "All"). I realize that if I make use of the grouping option, I can press a couple of buttons and have a shorter list of people to choose from - but I hate pressing more buttons than I have to. So my question is: Is there anyway I can make one of the groups the list I see when I first open the app? Or am I stuck with looking at all of them and pushing those extra buttons?

 

[TnTexas]

Eighty-four views and no responses? Guess that means I'm stuck with the extra button pushing. Drats.

 

[dpham00]

by default, it will view contacts from Google, sim, and phone. you can push the contacts you do not want to see to the sim, and uncheck the sim box in the View menu.

but if your list is not that long, you can put people shortcuts on your homescreen as well, i do that for the half dozen or so people i regularly call, so that accounts for 90% of my calls.

if you have more than say a handfull of people you want on the list, then by default, the screen to the right of the main homescreen is the favorites widget, it will populate with everyone who you have in your favorites group.

 

[TnTexas]

Some possibilities to play around with here. Thanks!

 

[paintdrinkingpete]

So I'm in the process of entering everyone in my address book into my Thunderbolt. Problem is when I open the People app now, instead of looking at a short list of people I usually call, I'm faced with a long list of contacts (titled "All"). I realize that if I make use of the grouping option, I can press a couple of buttons and have a shorter list of people to choose from - but I hate pressing more buttons than I have to. So my question is: Is there anyway I can make one of the groups the list I see when I first open the app? Or am I stuck with looking at all of them and pushing those extra buttons?

The very short answer to your question? No.

The longer answer?...

I'm assuming that this is your first smartphone linked to Google, or maybe your first smartphone at all. Either way, the contacts list (or "people" app) is, unlike on a normal phone, also used for email messaging as well as calls, so everything is integrated. Frankly, this is one thing I miss about BlackBerry, because even though the contact list may be very long, when you opened it up, the keyboard popped up and you enter the first few letters of a person's name and it would auto-search and filter the results, as opposed as having to scroll through such a long list.

Now, on the other hand, if you open the phone app, you CAN start to the type the person's name you're trying to call (using T-9 mode on the phone dial pad), and it will auto-search the contact list for any matches that phone numbers assigned to them. Probably the easiest way to do it you're trying to make a call.

Moving contacts to the SIM isn't really a good option. The SIM has limited memory, and only holds the name and primary phone number fields. There is an option to save contacts to the phone's storage, but I'm not sure if there is an easy way to move existing Google contacts to the phone's storage or not. If you were to do that, you could then set your view to only show "phone" contacts and not the Google contacts. I don't recommend it, but I suppose it is possible.

What I do recommend is logging on to Gmail via your computer, going into the contacts folder and "cleaning it up". Everything in the "My Contacts" label is synced with your phone. Google does a pretty good job with it's logic for auto-saving contacts for you, but if you've been using GMail for a while like I have, you're bound to have quite a few listed in there that you have no reason keep and can be delete, or there may be several that can be merged. (Like people whose phone numbers and email addresses are listed under different names, i.e. "John Doe" and "Johnny Doe"). Doing this should at least give you a list that only includes people who are relevant to you.

One benefit to this method is that any contacts you add using the web interface will automatically be synced to the phone, and you can even import lists from Outlook or other email clients, so that can make doing a "mass add" of contacts much easier.

 

[TnTexas]

In case searching through a long list of contacts bugs anyone else, thought I'd share the work around I figured out for my "problem" - add numbers at the beginning of the name of the contacts you want near the beginning of the list. That will make the names look a little funny on the display screen when you're talking to them; but since numbers come before letters when alphabetizing things, it will put them at the top of the list and make them easier to find. Granted, it's not a perfect solution to the problem, but it's better than nothing.

 

[gumshoe351#AC]

I believe this is the answer you are looking for. In your full list of contacts select which ones are your favorites and place them in that group. When you are finished with this go to your people widget which should at first contain all your contacts. Long press on the widget and then drag it down and to the left to the edit box. Then change the people widget list to favorites or what ever group you want to see by default.

 

[robrecht]

I believe this is the answer you are looking for. In your full list of contacts select which ones are your favorites and place them in that group. When you are finished with this go to your people widget which should at first contain all your contacts. Long press on the widget and then drag it down and to the left to the edit box. Then change the people widget list to favorites or what ever group you want to see by default.

This is also what I recommend. Let's you see pictures of your favorite, most frequent contacts. When you tap on the favorite, you can have it open to the full contact and then choose mobile, or home, or email, etc. Or you can set an option to always call on mobile phone, etc. What I'd like, though, but have not yet found, is a way to place a single icon for this favorites widget on my homescreen and have it open up to full screen mode when you tap it. You can do something similar by putting shortcuts to individual contacts in a folder on your home screen, but the ordering of these 'favorites' is not easy to arrange.

 

[anon(2632)]

This is also what I recommend. Let's you see pictures of your favorite, most frequent contacts. When you tap on the favorite, you can have it open to the full contact and then choose mobile, or home, or email, etc. Or you can set an option to always call on mobile phone, etc. What I'd like, though, but have not yet found, is a way to place a single icon for this favorites widget on my homescreen and have it open up to full screen mode when you tap it. You can do something similar by putting shortcuts to individual contacts in a folder on your home screen, but the ordering of these 'favorites' is not easy to arrange.

You might try circle launcher to get what you are trying to do. It puts an icon on your home screen that you tap. You choose which contacts go in. when you tap the icon, the contacts that you added will pop up on screen for you to choose. You can do the same with apps.