What is causing contacts to crash?

[AC Question]

I'm on Samsung s3, recently an error started occuring, the message "Contacts has stopped" shows up even when I'm not trying to dial a number, and sometimes I cannot open contacts due to that error.
Also every time I try to chose which contacts to display it says: "sim card initializing".
I tried clearing data, restoring factory settings and even got a software format, but the error remains.
I removed the sim card to test if it is causing the problem, but same error appeared.
Could it be an app (I actually reinstalled all the*apps*I had before the software format )? Should I format my software again or simply uninstall everything and reinstall apps one by one? Any suggestion would be very helpful. Thanks for your support.

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It might still be worth trying a replacement SIM card--talk to your carrier.

Are all of your contacts associated with your Google account, or are they in the local Phone account? Does the phone actually give you the option to save contacts to the SIM?

 

[cycyka87]

Thank you.
My contacts were originally saved to phone, and associated to Google account. But at the time the error started showing, they suddenly disappeared from phone and only shows the ones associated with my Google account.
No I do not have the option to save to SIM card, new contacts can be saved to Device, Google or Hotmail accounts.
So the problem is being caused by my SIM card, not a software bug? This error is starting to slow down my phone terribly!
Thank you again really appreciate the help

 

[B. Diddy]

Contacts are either associated with your Google account or with the Phone account. Do you mean all of your accounts were associated with Google? I'm not sure what you mean when you say your contacts were originally saved to phone. If you mean that they were associated with the Phone account, then they weren't synced to Google.

Honestly, I can't be sure if it's a software issue or a SIM issue. The fact that you did a factory reset argues against a software issue, unless you automatically reinstalled all of your apps--if one of those apps is causing a problem, then it will persist despite the factory reset. Try booting into Safe Mode and see if the problem persists: How to boot the Galaxy S3 into Safe mode? | Support | SAMSUNG Levant

 

[cycyka87]

Yes I meant to say my contacts are connected to my google account.
In fact, I reinstalled all of my apps automatically which I can tell now was not a very smart move to do.
Tbh I have never booted my phone before, can something go wrong in safe mode that can harm my cell?

 

[B. Diddy]

Safe Mode is completely safe. When you're ready to boot back into normal mode, just power off completely, then power on again. Sometimes you have to power off, pull the battery for 10 seconds, then put it back in and power back on again.

 

[cycyka87]

I ran my phone in safe mode, and it seemed that my cell was running smoothly and faster than usual. The error "contacts has stopped" didn't show.
Nevertheless, I couldn't choose which contacts to display because it still showed "sim card initializing..."

 

[B. Diddy]

The only thing I can think of now is to try a new SIM card. If the same message keeps appearing, then there may be a hardware problem with the SIM slot.