Can I store contacts on my SD card? How?

Question

I have 400mb of internal storage on my HTC, 100 of which is consumed by my (extensive) contacts. I am constantly low on storage--is there any way to store my contacts on my SD card?

I looked in the application options and the option to move data to SD is grayed out.

Are there other smart ways to manage the size of my contacts list? I can't figure out how to create groups in Google contacts--i don't need to sync my entire addressbook to my phone but I do want to keep the full list. I also don't need to store photos for each contact, but Google seems to add those automatically.

Answer 1

As far as I know, all contacts in Android stored in a SQLite database inside the private folder of the "Contact Storage" app. The location is at /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts.db

So if you have root access to your device, it is theoretically fesible to either bind a folder on your SD card to the above location, or it is possible to make the above folder a symbol link (soft link) to a location on your SD card.

However, this is not recommended because the stability and performance of your device can be affected. For example, if you connect your phone to PC and mount it as drive, the SD card is temporarily unmounted on the phone. Another risky situations is when you boot your mobile phone and before the SD card is mounted. The Contact Storage app may try to access the contact list (maybe for caching some of the favorite contacts, or maybe someone call you) during this period, all these may not be expected by the Contact Storage app and could result in unpredictable result (e.g. a dirty state of the app which make your contact inaccessible).

Answer 2

Don't know about forcing contacts onto your SD card, but here are some good approaches to minimizing the volume of contacts that you sync to your phone:

• Sync only Gmail "My Contacts" group on android 2.3

• How do I sync only "My Contacts" from Google on Samsung Galaxy S?

Answer 3

You can Backup your contacts to sd-card : Open Contacts app and press menu button. Click on 'Back up Contacts'. Select 'Memory card'.

Creating Groups in Google Contacts : open https://www.google.com/contacts and sign in with your Google account. There is an option to create groups(The last but one option on Left column) click it and name the group. New group is now created under 'My Cantacts'. You can add contacts in it.

Filtering Contacts : You can filter contacts from particular group. To do this, Click on menu button and select 'Filter' option. Click on your Google account(Last option with email id). Uncheck the groups you want to filter out and click OK.