Develop Bugs

Complain about gmail contact picture resolution to google

Hi guys, have started a thread at google mobile support forum so we can get some attention on the low res contact picture problem
join in !
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=49e2b1adea1aa11c&hl=en

I wouldn't say my contacts that use a Google+ or have a profile with Google have hideous pictures. Although I would agree that Facebook syncing looks terrible but it's not really Googles problem.
Edit: Oh and you miss-spelt bigger

haha ups.. cant change it now..
Actually it is a Google issue. The gmail contact list, where the pictures are synced to, downgrade the resolution of the pictures

The pictures I changed in my phone, most of them, have remained at the higher resolution. However, once I wiped the phone to flash a new ROM, Google sync brought them all back at the lower resolution. Definite Google problem.

Now I get what your saying. To be honest I wouldn't be surprised if Google releases that as a feature in the next few months anyway. Just sit tight
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

A Google Employee just answered
Thanks for the feedback, everyone. The icons used in Google Contacts used to be a relatively low resolution, more of a thumbnail really. Those are the pictures that the phone pulls from first. There are a couple of ways you can bring higher resolution pictures in for your contacts.
1) Use your own high resolution photo. You can do this by opening a contact in the People app, tapping the menu, selecting Edit, then tapping on the photo icon. You'll be offered a choice to either take a photo right then, or pick a photo you've already got on your phone from the Gallery app.
2) Sync your contacts with Google+. If you and your contacts use Google+, you can launch the Google+ app on Android and set it to sync contacts from the app's settings. If your contact has a high resolution photo for their portrait in Google+ it'll get sync'd to your phone. Note that the initial contact photo sync from Google+ takes a little while to finish.
(Advanced note on #2: I was just playing with this a couple of days ago and noticed that the initial sync with Google+ prioritizes syncing a contact that you happen to be looking at. For example, if you're syncing 200 contacts but go look at your best friend immediately, it'll pull down your friend's photo right then and there before working on the rest of your contacts.)
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If you ask me its not good enough we all want this fixed so we can have high res fb pictures...

So I guess we're stuck with these 2 options... I hope they put some kind of size difference in place. Like thumbnail size for Google Talk and high-res for phone sync.

I added my feedback there (NexusDude).
We can also open a new thread in the Official Google Contacts support forum:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/label?lid=3a63236689cf8dbd&hl=en
Anyone can write a good problem description in clear and good english language?
I am not that good in english ...

just added my comment as well. thanks for initiating the post.

I am also opening a question in StackOverflow.com for an application that we can use to replace contact photos easily using locally stored high-resolution image files.
Please, if you are Android developer, this kind of app will be very useful!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...otos-using-local-image-files-programmatically
Think about it, your app will solve this on-going years of issue that will probably never be solved by Google.

Also put a request in the Android Software Development forum:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1391253

This may be a bit off topic, but does Kies sync Outlook 2010 (not exchange, but a local copy) to the phone?
I am coming from an HTC Desire and i hate the google contact sync.. i need my Outlock Sync back..

How this is still an issue with all the changes they made to contacts is just retarded.

gogol said:
I am also opening a question in StackOverflow.com for an application that we can use to replace contact photos easily using locally stored high-resolution image files.
Please, if you are Android developer, this kind of app will be very useful!
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/...otos-using-local-image-files-programmatically
Think about it, your app will solve this on-going years of issue that will probably never be solved by Google.
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I'm sure it will be updated eventually. Personally, I find it easier to just manually go update my contacts; I'm utterly anal about perfect organization of data, though. I posted a reply to your SO post as follows:
It's certainly possible, and wouldn't need root access. The problem is going to be that the user would need to properly name all the images first, consistently, accurately, and in a unique manner. For example, if you had three contacts named John Rodeo, then the naming convention of JohnRodeo.png or Rodeo_John.png would not work, as you could not have three images with the same name. Even if there was no duplication of data, you would need to make sure all names followed a consistent naming scheme (lastname_firstname.png for example). Of course, you could also add an algorithm to search filenames for likely variations and not have to worry about exact consistency.
It's certainly a feasible idea, but it would be much easier if Facebook would kiss and make up with Google already, and just play nice with the Contacts API. :/
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Thanks for your feedback,
Looking into the history of this issue, I don't think it will ever get updated. Come on, it has not been fixed since 2008 ... 3 years.
And if you read the answer from Google employee in that Google Mobile support forum? They won't listen. They want to push people to use Google+. Forcing the solution by syncing with Google+.
That is sad ... same with syncing Facebook, not all contacts are on Facebook / Google+.
Obviously, Google should know this issue, otherwise they don't test their software properly. They should be aware how ugly is the low resolution contact photos, especially when user receives a phone call.
I cannot think any reason, that design master, Matias Duarte would allow this to happen!
About your feedback on my question in StackOverflow:
Naming the file is not really a problem. User needs only to do it once. And for multiple contact with same names, well, you can add phone number into it as additional option. Oh by the way, this is not about Facebook contact sync, especially because not all contacts are on Facebook. This is mainly to workaround the low resolution contact photos after synced with GMail Contacts
=======
Too bad, even though I am a developer (PC software), I don't have experience with Android software development. I don't know, probably this would push me to learn it.
Solution that I could think of, that I am capable of doing it:
- Root the device
- Download the contacts database (I read this is just SQLite3 db)
- Create PC application to manipulate the blob photo data inside the contacts db
- Push back the contacts db to the device
Yeah, it would be much better if we can have this Android app.
And I am begging to any dev around this XDA ... please, make this app for us!
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1391253
copkay said:
I'm sure it will be updated eventually. Personally, I find it easier to just manually go update my contacts; I'm utterly anal about perfect organization of data, though. I posted a reply to your SO post as follows:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I don't see how this is a Google problem when its simply grabbing the tiny photo off facebook.
Obviously the contact image supports high resolutions because I've added plenty of contact pictures myself from the camera. It saves them properly.
The problem is the SOURCE. If facebook has a bunch of 32x32 images for contacts, Google can't magically make them HD. Sure you can go in to a specific contacts photo album, download the picture, and add it manually... but there is no way to do this automatically.
Sync your contacts with a source which contains higher resolution images and your problem will be solved.
Facebook won't do it because Facebook uses the images all over the place. Images need to be small. Can you imagine trying to load a Facebook page with 500 HD pictures? It's facebook sync, not magic.
Blame it on the 4.63 HD resolution screen you have. On a tiny low res screen, the images don't look as stretched... but on a HD screen there will be lots of nasties.
So again, for HD pictures you'll need to find a source with HD images to sync with or add them manually. Have at it.

player911 said:
I don't see how this is a Google problem when its simply grabbing the tiny photo off facebook.
Obviously the contact image supports high resolutions because I've added plenty of contact pictures myself from the camera. It saves them properly.
The problem is the SOURCE. If facebook has a bunch of 32x32 images for contacts, Google can't magically make them HD. Sure you can go in to a specific contacts photo album, download the picture, and add it manually... but there is no way to do this automatically.
Sync your contacts with a source which contains higher resolution images and your problem will be solved.
Facebook won't do it because Facebook uses the images all over the place. Images need to be small. Can you imagine trying to load a Facebook page with 500 HD pictures? It's facebook sync, not magic.
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It's syncing the PROFILE pictures. Facebook profile pictures are not 32x32! Mine is 728x688, for example. Facebook obviously has smaller versions to use for thumbnails on its own site. The problem is clearly not at Facebook's end.

player911 said:
I don't see how this is a Google problem when its simply grabbing the tiny photo off facebook.
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Click to collapse
Well it IS a google problem imho. Maybe Im just alone with this since I dont use fb, but I added pictures to my google contacts manually. (And I used the computer for it - not the phone )
I added a High Res photo to each contact, but the google contacts changed em to a crappy resolution. On my old phone (milestone) I had no problem with it ... but now? It just looks hideous :/
And since I still dislike the use of facebook I would have to search a good picture for each damn contact again :/

player911 said:
I don't see how this is a Google problem when its simply grabbing the tiny photo off facebook.
Obviously the contact image supports high resolutions because I've added plenty of contact pictures myself from the camera. It saves them properly.
The problem is the SOURCE. If facebook has a bunch of 32x32 images for contacts, Google can't magically make them HD. Sure you can go in to a specific contacts photo album, download the picture, and add it manually... but there is no way to do this automatically.
Sync your contacts with a source which contains higher resolution images and your problem will be solved.
Facebook won't do it because Facebook uses the images all over the place. Images need to be small. Can you imagine trying to load a Facebook page with 500 HD pictures? It's facebook sync, not magic.
Blame it on the 4.63 HD resolution screen you have. On a tiny low res screen, the images don't look as stretched... but on a HD screen there will be lots of nasties.
So again, for HD pictures you'll need to find a source with HD images to sync with or add them manually. Have at it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have been seeing this for 3 years now, it is not the source!!! you could manually stick a 24526246HD res picture the...............it's what happens to the original picture after it syncs with Google servers.

See my comment:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=27930642&postcount=10
It's about an app I made that syncs the high resolution photos with picasaweb. Hope it helps.

[Q] Why Google Contacts doesn't support Hi Resolution pictures?

Hi,
This question had already been posted in 'Android Q&A' section few days back, but didn't get any reply. Hope someone can help me with this problem here.
The new ICS 'People' app allows us to use higher resolution images for contacts. And it looks great on big screens. So I spent a lot of time, updating the contacts with high resolution photos. Also I made sure that I 'Sync' ed the contacts after it is done. But now, after doing a factory reset, when I tried to sync back the contacts, it is loading only the low resolution photos of the new updated pictures and not the high resolution of those pics. I checked in GMAIL->Contacts and found they have the same low resolution ones.
Isn't there a way to sync high resolution pictures in Google Contacts?

I'd also be interested in this. Its the Google account that saves the pictures in a tiny resolution. It looks horrible when synced to ICS.

there are three ways to get high resolution pictures.
First, and the only real correct way, is to use Google+. downside is that unless your contacts are on G+ they won't get a high res picture.
Secondly, use haxsync to sync facebook with your phone.
third, manually set high res pictures for every single contact. But yes everytime you wipe your phone you'll have to redo this. However, on normal useage it seems to keep them. i know my phone has synced a few times yet i still have the high resolution pictures on my phone for 3 contacts that are not on G+ and i've rebooted or shut down the phone at least a dozen times, even flashed rom updates and they kept the pictures.

This issue has been discussed here many times.
Short, every time you sync a google contact with a picture from google to your phone it will have the ugly 96*96 resolution. There is no way around it until the contacts team changes this restriction. They are aware of the issue but no word if or when a change is coming: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=49e2b1adea1aa11c&hl=en

So wouldn't syncing your Facebook pics also be temporary since it probably saves the pics locally?
Here's to hoping Google ups the resolution of Google contacts for those who have lots if contacts that aren't on Google+ and wipe their phones often...

Lithoss said:
So wouldn't syncing your Facebook pics also be temporary since it probably saves the pics locally?
Here's to hoping Google ups the resolution of Google contacts for those who have lots if contacts that aren't on Google+ and wipe their phones often...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, if you use Google+ or Facebook Sync the pictures are high resolution. thats because it saves that picture to your phone in addition to the google contact picture, but uses the high res G+ or FB picture.

gokpog said:
This issue has been discussed here many times.
Short, every time you sync a google contact with a picture from google to your phone it will have the ugly 96*96 resolution. There is no way around it until the contacts team changes this restriction. They are aware of the issue but no word if or when a change is coming: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=49e2b1adea1aa11c&hl=en
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's too bad! What the f does G+ has anything to do with contacts photo sync. If I want to have a high res photos of my granpa and granny, should I ask them to be on G+? (One can even imagine them being on FB, but G+????)
Also now, too many devices are going to get the 4.0 update and this issue's gonna look terrible!

Even if you manually add pictures to each contact (which I did), the pictures still aren't very high resolution. ICS still resizes the images, leaving them much less sharp than the pictures I originally chose.

If we report these issues to GSMArena or other such websites, will they publish it? So that Google might consider it seriously... Like filling in a petition

I actually though about just this too.
It's apalling that Google doesn't listen to thousands of frustrated users, but hopefully they will listen to big and influential websites like GSMarena.
So we would need people with good contact to the authors of these pages.
Anybody around here knowing one or more authors?

Its already being fixed.

RogerPodacter said:
Its already being fixed.
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Click to collapse
I would like to see a link or something to that.
It's not that I don't believe you but I've seen this problem reported for a loooong time and it's yet to be fixed. I can't say for sure since I'm not a dev for Google but this "fix" should take maybe a week max.

RogerPodacter said:
Its already being fixed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for the past one year? They should've fixed it before releasing galaxy nexus. as of now haxsync is the only lifesaver. Not only for High Resolution picture, but also for Facebook sync

Is it fixed?

Hah. Google forum thread:
http://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!category-topic/gmail/android/MIt6-tdZZPk
Android bugtracker:
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3870
Google+ comment stream:
https://plus.google.com/109941711245243963357/posts/YBMTuysqm3B
Months of people shouting the same complaint and google employees chiming in with varying degrees of "working on it" and no progress.
Seems like for whatever reason, someone somewhere thinks it's better to say nothing than to tell people that it'll be a while. That or someone at google is just really bad at their job.

emmarbee said:
for the past one year? They should've fixed it before releasing galaxy nexus. as of now haxsync is the only lifesaver. Not only for High Resolution picture, but also for Facebook sync
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Facebook sync is Facebook's fault. The API is there, they are just lazy.

I'm very disappointed, this bug is very annoying.

The bigger a company is, the slower they become. Instead of having one guy do the work and fix it, you need to pass through several layers of approval and people "management" which get in the way. Not only is the request lost several times in between but even if someone at the company wants to fix it, they're told to do something else or fear the risk of being fired.
This is why progress is often achieved by small groups or individuals.

emmarbee said:
If we report these issues to GSMArena or other such websites, will they publish it? So that Google might consider it seriously... Like filling in a petition
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This really sounds like it could work. It's unfortunate but there's generally little incentive to change something unless a fuss is made. Look at what happened with Siri and the "best phone ever" question (Lumiagate). This stuff happens in politics all the time. Nothing gets changed until the press has a field day with it.
zapek666 said:
This is why progress is often achieved by small groups or individuals.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's a good way of putting it. I wish this was fixed because I love seeing high-res pictures in my caller id. Unfortunately, none of my friends use Google+ and I don't use Facebook. Currently I just update the pictures of people who I've starred and, every now and then, I'll update the pictures of people I happen to have on my phone at the moment. I hope it gets fixed by the time JB is dropped.

Maybe it's cause of bandwitch or older phones that will use 96 x 96. That's why they are thinking how to get around this... Let's hope that they will soon fix this issue.

[Q] PLEASE HELP! Unlocked bootloader, lost my 2 week old baby's pics, I wanna die...

Please help me... I unlocked bootloader, it wiped all my phone, then rooted hoping to get some sort of backup. No luck. Can you please help? Lost my 2 week old's baby photos due to stupidity.
David

try this: http://www.wondershare.com/disk-utility/recover-deleted-photos-from-nexus-s-and-galaxy-nexus.html
if that doesnt work, you might be out of luck.

Thanks Zep... unfortunately this doesn't work with the Galaxy Nexus, as it doesn't have an SD card and isn't recognized by the program.

there are some apps that have require root access that i have heard you can use to restore deleted files
https://play.google.com/store/apps/...mNvbS5oZXhhbW9iLmhleGFtb2JyZWNvdmVyeWxpdGUiXQ..

Sorry dude that sucks. Even though some people may hate it that is the benefits of the cloud.
Google+ uses an instant upload function that automatically uploads pictures taken from your phone into Google Photo's. DropBox has a similar feature which also syncs your photos into the cloud storage. Google+ edges dropbox out because it allows you to view photos sitting in the cloud Google Photos/Picasa directly in your gallery.
I am consistently wiping and changing ROMS on my phone so I opted to not have anything major physically stored on it. All my albums are store in Google+ Photos and are not shared, they are private and only visible to me. So if I ever have to wipe..say I am on vacation and my phone gets stolen and I have to do a remote wipe before transferring the pictures I snapped over, I know they were probably uploaded to Google Photos and I won't lose any candids.

Thanks Zep.,
These progs. unfortunately aren't working with ICS. I really appreciate your advice. Thanks again.
Dave

I'm sorry to hear you lost your photos, but every post about unlocking your bootloader states that it will wipe your phone.
Per the previous post, think about using Google+, Drive, or Dropbox.
I hope you are able to recover the photos.

Thanks for the advice. I'll try to somehow backdoor install "undelete for root users" on my phone and see if it'll work with ics.

DavidChitownNexus said:
Thanks for the advice. I'll try to somehow backdoor install "undelete for root users" on my phone and see if it'll work with ics.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Did it work for you? I have the exact problem and i am a little desperate right now

HeCareth said:
Sorry dude that sucks. Even though some people may hate it that is the benefits of the cloud.
Google+ uses an instant upload function that automatically uploads pictures taken from your phone into Google Photo's. DropBox has a similar feature which also syncs your photos into the cloud storage. Google+ edges dropbox out because it allows you to view photos sitting in the cloud Google Photos/Picasa directly in your gallery.
I am consistently wiping and changing ROMS on my phone so I opted to not have anything major physically stored on it. All my albums are store in Google+ Photos and are not shared, they are private and only visible to me. So if I ever have to wipe..say I am on vacation and my phone gets stolen and I have to do a remote wipe before transferring the pictures I snapped over, I know they were probably uploaded to Google Photos and I won't lose any candids.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great advise, +1

cabronsaim said:
Great advise, +1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Its great, but it doesnt help me so much right now

DavidChitownNexus said:
Please help me... I unlocked bootloader, it wiped all my phone, then rooted hoping to get some sort of backup. No luck. Can you please help? Lost my 2 week old's baby photos due to stupidity.
David
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
U should post/ask this in the actually Google / android forums, yes sounds crazy since ur basically hacking ur phone but if they didn't want us to do it they wouldn't give us stock images and way to relock bootloader, its worth a try ... if anyone would no its them

Currently there is no android app that can restore files deleted off an ext4 partition (which is what the GNex uses). Not sure if there is anything available in Linux, but if so, you should theoretically be able to find some way to mount the /sdcard and use the Linux program. Haven't looked into it myself though.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

[Q] Instant upload and gallery

Hi guys.
So I've been using Instant upload for a long time now and I like the option to have extra copies of my images stored in the cloud in case something happens to my phone or something like that. Everything works great except one thing.
From time to time I get new folders in gallery, albums of pictures that are already in the main "Instant Upload" album are showing up alone. Sorted in the Y/M/D format (usually). That wasn't a big deal, I downloaded Perfect Tool for Picasa and dealt with it by deleting extra albums, and only leaving album "Instant Upload" undeleted. And for a few days everything is good again. And a few weeks back problems started, by problems I mean something that Google changed. New captured pictures are uploaded but put into the separate folders and again, sorted by date. That just looks ugly in the Gallery.
So my question is next.
Is it possible to keep the option for Instant Upload but make it not visible in the Gallery ? I'd really like that.
If there's the need to use a different Pictures Viewer, let it be.
Please, someone answer.
Thank you for reading.

I think you have to uncheck the synchronization with Instant Upload and Google Photos in accounts' settings, then clear gallery's cache if needed.

But won't that disable uploading photos to the cloud ?

Still need help with this, if anyone knows anything about how this works, please help out.

I'm having the exact same experience. Apparently it's a known issue and Google is already working on a resolution.
https://productforums.google.com/fo...oogle-plus-discuss/BfzURgZjMtc[126-150-false]
P.S. This is not a Gnex specific issue... it's happening on all phones.

HTC Desire EYE- Delete Google Photos From Cloud, But Keep Device Copy?

HTC Google backup query
Not sure where to post, newbie so be gentle!
Hi all. I have a HTC Desire EYE (UK based) and use the automated Google upload service. The problem I have is that I want to delete certain pics from the Cloud without removing them from my device itself. I have a huge amount of memes and pics that I occasionally like to use when posting but I don't want them ALL to be kept on my cloud storage which I want for family pictures and a few select items only.
As far as I can see from reading about a zillion posts on many forums if you delete a photo or picture from the Cloud area (G+ style) it will also be removed from your phone (along with any other synced device) regardless. This is not what I want! Is there not any way to manually delete photo's from my Google account and leave them on my phone?
To clarify I also have a huge collection of memes that I really don't want clogging up my Google drive (and a few tasteless memes that I might post on certain pages but don't want kept on my Cloud storage or other places).
In an idea situation Google would upload all I have on my phone then I could manually go to my G+ account and remove certain pics I don't want there but they are NOT removed from my HTC phone. This was always the case in the past and seems a reasonable thing to do to my mind. Why is this not possible?
Thanks in advance
Mark

Mark_Calmus said:
In an idea situation Google would upload all I have on my phone then I could manually go to my G+ account and remove certain pics I don't want there but they are NOT removed from my HTC phone. This was always the case in the past and seems a reasonable thing to do to my mind. Why is this not possible?
Thanks in advance
Mark
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not the ideal solution, but you could put any photos you don't want to be synced to the cloud in a separate folder on your phone and then disable syncing of that folder. I know that the you can include/exclude specific folders using the Google Photos app, just click the menu icon (upper-left corner) and then go to 'Device folders'. From there you can turn on/off syncing per folder.