Contact app shows duplicate phone numbers

Hello everyone

Somehow, since the latest FP update to v1.8.5 I see lots of duplicate or triple-duplicate numbers when you open the Messaging app > create a new message and > hit the “Add people” button to add numbers. Then the list of numbers is loading (takes pretty long form me, 2 minutes for only 120 contacts). And then here’s the problem: many numbers are duplicate.

I digged and guess, these are caused by other apps, i.E. What’sApp and Viber where exactly the same number is stored as well. In that case I do not want to see these numbers and make the list of numbers load a lot faster.

Adjusting the settings of the “People” app, i.E. “Contacts to display” does not make any difference. I disabled Viber, What’s App, and others, still I see them in the Messaging app.

Looks like a bug to me.

Do you experience similar issues?

Michael

I can’t reproduce this. For now, I moved the topic to the Help category.

Do you sync your contacts with e.g. Google?

Sync? Under “People” I see lots of accounts I sync with. I.E. Facebook, Glide, LinkedIn, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, etc.

Is that a problem?

Yeah that’s propably the reason.
Try Contact Merger.

Thx, will give it a try

I tried too and the only duplicated contacts are my provider services numbers stored on the SIM card…I’ll investigate if they were imported on the phone too or if they’re saved only on the SIM card (in the former case it wasn’t me, I don’t want them on my phone because I don’t use those numbers)
Moreover it seems only contacts of one of the SIMs (I use two SIM cards) are duplicated not both…
Thank you for addressing this issue :smile:
Bye!

The ContactMerger didn’t help. I still have too many duplicate phone numbers and opening the contacts while texting takes about 70 seconds to load which is way too long. I only have 140 contacts. Must be a bug …

@paulakreuzer Maybe add this to the bug list?

@Stefan what do you think? @DjDas can partially reproduce this so maybe it is a bug?

PS: @michaelheuberger what exactly didn’t work with contact merger?
Did you not get the option to merge all duplicate contacts? (Are the names exact matches?)
Did you merge all duplicates but did they reappear afterwards?

E.g. I can merge Telegram contacts but if telegram has two phone numbers for the same person the next time I’ll open telegram again I’ll have two contacts again.

I’m using Whatsapp and don’t have any issues with duplicate contacts. I think this one can only be filed as a bug, if the problem persists after a hard reset.

@paulakreuzer Well, some of my contacts have the same mobile phone numbers stored for What’sApp, Viber and normal text messages: in other words, the same number is stored at three places and thus appears three time in the contact app when I open it within the text messaging app (SMS).

Note, this doesn’t happen when I open the contact app directly, there all the numbers appear once. But not from the text messaging app within. That’s a subtle difference but makes the bug visible.

Maybe you simply don’t display all contacts in the contact app? (settings button > contacts to display)

Already tried that. Selected just the Contact app, have all others deselected like Viber, still it takes ages to load contacts. The bug must be something else …

From initial investigations it seems I have an additional contacts group called SDN with the numbers I see duplicated on the messaging app (the SIM1’s services numbers) and in the contacts app.
I didn’t understand yet if it is normal or is due to the fact some time ago I switched the 2 SIM cards on the slots and the contacts app reimported the contacts.
But given that I see the contacts duplicated also in the contacts app, the fact I see them also duplicated in the messaging app is normal, or not?
I don’t have proofs for other applications because I use only Skype and there I don’t have phone numbers but only Skype names, BUT I noticed the merged contacts are not simply the result of a fusion of data but it seems like a “join between database tables”, given that you can “unmerge” them, so I suppose there could be a difference if you have i.e. a whatsapp contact merged to a normal contact because I expect the resulting contact to have the same information (phone number) duplicated.
Am I right?
Bye!

Trying to reproduce this… So you are saying that you have contacts which store multiple accounts (e.g. I have a Max Mustermann in my contacts and his phone number is 0987 654321. Now below the number there is a field each, which says Whatsapp, Viber, etc…).

  • I open the contacts app and there is only one contact, with multiple accounts, as explained above.
  • I open the SMS app, start typing a contact’s name with multiple accounts, and the app returns contacts only once.
  • I press the little bust ( :bust_in_silhouette: ) , with the plus symbol, which opens my contacts app. There I can see all the contacts only once.

A difference to your setup may be, that my contacts are stored in a DavDroid account, which syncs with my Owncloud server.

Anyhow, I am referring to my post above (which you seem to have ignored):

@DjDas Your observation regarding the contact’s app merging function might be right, but I would think, that the app Contact Merger should do its job more definitive. Since @michaelheuberger states that Contact Merger did not work, I suspect a defunct installation of an app or parts of Fairphone OS. That’s why I suggest a hard reset.

Almost. First, I sync my contacts to my own Owncloud sever with the CardDAV-Sync app.

To your steps:

  • I open the contacts app and there is only one contact, with multiple accounts, as explained above. <-- CORRECT, ONLY ONE
  • I open the SMS app, start typing a contact’s name with multiple accounts, and the app returns contacts only once. <-- CORRECT, ONLY ONE
  • I press the little bust ( ) , with the plus symbol, which opens my contacts app. There I can see all the contacts only once NO, HERE I SEE MULTIPLE CONTACT ENTRIES OF THE SAME PERSON FOR EACH ACCOUNT THEY HAVE (I also see email addresses but why are they here? An SMS app doesn’t need emails)

Hope this clears for reproduction?

OK when I hit that bust in the SMS app I can see “multiple contact entries”. (they are not multiple contacts, just every contact has one line for every email-address and phone number)

  • There are lines for email addresses and landline numbers, which is not necessary
  • There is a line for every number but:
  • There are no duplicate numbers.

I don’t know if anyone is able to send texts to email addresses - definitely not to landlines - so that might be something that should be changed with future updates (if it was possible and not dependent on Mediatek).

Exactly, that’s it. Almost. Everything else is correct, except I do see duplicate numbers and the loading process is very slow. One minute or so.

You are able to send MMS to email addresses. However, preventing email addresses from showing in the list, does not work (more here). PS.: Some landlines can also receive SMS: Festnetz-SMS (Deutsch).

@michaelheuberger Please use the quote feature, if you reference to another person’s words. :blush:

1 Like

i have a similar problem. i had lots of duplicates & became very messay so i copied everything to the phone, deleted everything from the SIM card, then deleted all the duplicates from the phone. i then copied my contacts back to the SIM card, & at first it seemed ok, but pretty soon duplicates started appearing again. it seems that on the SIM card, any contacts that have more than one number (eg a mobile & a landline, or 2 mobiles) get separated out into individual contacts. i tried to use the “merge/join” function, but this option only appears for contacts saved to the phone. in general there are a lot less editing options for SIM card contacts than for phone contacts.

the workaround seems to be to only display only the contacts saved to the phone memory & not to the SIM card. i guess that periodically i’ll delete everything from the SIM card & re-copy the contacts from the phone back to the SIM card as a backup. but i am curious as to why it separates out contacts & why there is no “merge” function for the SIM card contacts.