Rookie Question About Syncing Contacts

[nooter99]

As I've mentioned many times before, I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to all this new (new to me!) smartphone stuff. But I'm learning, thanks to all you fine folks!

So here's my rookie question of the day. I never had a Google account until I bought my Droid. Prior to opening account, the guy at the VZ store moved all my contacts over from my old flip phone. Do I have to manually sync those contacts to Google, and if so, how do I do it? Or was it somehow magically done OTA? My point is, If I lose my phone I want to make sure all info was stored somewhere I can retrieve it from to install on a new phone. Also, what about the things other than contacts, for example, gallery pictures, apps etc. ? I figured out how to backup everything onto sd card, but wouldn't that be useless if phone was lost or stolen? Hope all that makes sense.

 

[hookbill]

As I've mentioned many times before, I'm pretty much clueless when it comes to all this new (new to me!) smartphone stuff. But I'm learning, thanks to all you fine folks!

So here's my rookie question of the day. I never had a Google account until I bought my Droid. Prior to opening account, the guy at the VZ store moved all my contacts over from my old flip phone. Do I have to manually sync those contacts to Google, and if so, how do I do it? Or was it somehow magically done OTA? My point is, If I lose my phone I want to make sure all info was stored somewhere I can retrieve it from to install on a new phone. Also, what about the things other than contacts, for example, gallery pictures, apps etc. ? I figured out how to backup everything onto sd card, but wouldn't that be useless if phone was lost or stolen? Hope all that makes sense.

You need to look at your gmail account and see what's in there. This is a Google phone, so that gmail account is very important to you. If you don't see it in the gmail account, then import them from the SD card and sync your gmail on your phone.

 

[nooter99]

When you say "look in your gmail account and see whats in there", does that have to be done on a PC? Seems like when I go to account using the phone, the info/access is very limited. BTW, from poking around under settings..accounts & sync, I did see that sync is turned on, I assume that's a good thing?

 

[rkeller62]

As far as I know syncing is 2 way, so all of your contact info should be synced to your email account. As hook mentioned, just log into your gmail account on your pc and look at your contacts list to make sure they are there.

Makes it really nice to know if you have to replace your phone, or you upgrade to a new android phone, that all your contacts will automatically sync to your new device.

 

[nooter99]

OK, I found them. Makes me feel better LOL. What about all the other stuff. I understand the part about all my downloaded apps being listed on the market for later retrieval, but what about galleries, is there way to save those. Wait a minute, I just realized, I can just drag those onto my PC right? Doh! Sometimes I even shock myself at how stupid I am!