Trying to solve Problem: Huge Contacts Database

Question

On a HTC Sensation running ICS 4.0.3, something caused my contacts database to rapidly grow.

The DB is now 580 megabytes and growing (sometimes over a megabyte per hour) despite the fact that I:

1. disabled all syncs (I found out that the Google Contacts sync had been not working for the last couple of months)
2. uninstalled all 3rd party sync apps (LinkedIn, FaceBook)
3. removed all all accounts but my Google accounts from "Accounts & Sync"
4. disabled all network access (no WiFi, no Data)

None of the above steps made the problem go away.
Looking with Contacts Remover, some contacts have about 300 LinkedIn contact links and photos.

My goal is to save as much information as possible, sync that to my Google account, then ditch the Contacts database and reload from Google.

The constant memory pressure makes it hard to run applications (I need to move apps to SD to get some storage memory, then run something, and hope that while running the storage memory doesn't run out).

Basically my phone is now useless.

My idea to try solving the problem is this:

1. export the Contacts to VCF on the SD card (success)
2. copy the VCF to a machine that can run the Android AVD (success)
3. install an AVD that allows to add a Google account for sync (success)
4. copy the VCF to the AVD SD card using DDS in Eclipse (success)
5. import the VCF into the People app of the AVD (success)
6. sync the AVD to Google (fail)

The last step fails, but doesn't generate any error.
The AVD is using these settings to be as close as possible to my physical device:

• Target=Google APIs (Google Inc.)
• Platform=4.0
• API Level=14
• CPU/ABI=ARM (armeabi-v7a)

Two questions (given that I want to sync back the contacts to my Google account):

• How can I make the last step work?
• What alternatives can I use if I cannot get the last step to work?

The VCF files total to about 3 megabyte (with about 3000 contacts that is about a kilobyte per contact, not close to 200 kilobyte as in the DB)

Answer 1

You already have a working vCard file (.vcf), just import it using GMail's web interface. If this VCF is still bad, you can apply simple text processing (regex search & replace) to it before importing it to Google.

Here are the steps to import a vCard file into GMail using the web interface.

Here's an excerpt from Google's help:

1. Click Gmail at the top-left corner of your Gmail page, then choose Contacts.
2. Click the More actions dropdown menu and select Import....
3. Click the Choose File button and locate the vCard file you'd like to upload.
4. Select the file and click the Import button.

Answer 2

You could also take a look at the Contact Cleaner app for an initial cleanup. Not sure how much help that will be in your case (with the LinkedIn stuff it doesn't care about).

Another thing to consider: temporarily remove the LinkedIn "provider" from your configuration->accounts (if it is still left there after you uninstalled the connected app) may get rid you of all the LinkedIn-connections (at least it works this way with some Xing stuff; not sure about LinkedIn as I do not use it) -- and probably restore them without duplication when you re-add it (make a backup before trying this).

I am aware this doesn't completely answer your question, but it may solve a big deal of your problem concerning the size of your contact database, giving you at least a "partly relieve" and more time to consider a final approach.