Contacts storage

[Guest Sanukk]

Hi All,

My contacts storage was taking up 85meg of space, I've now got it down to 57.4meg but this is still ridiculously large.

It seems to be the images that are attached to the contacts that is eating most of that space. Is there any way to keep the numbers in app storage (so they are available even if the SD isn't mounted) and move everything else connected to the SD where there is loads of space?

~S

[Guest Sanukk]

Any ideas?

[Guest Sanukk]

Third time lucky?

[Guest eeanneli]

Hey

If they are google contacts go into accounts and sync uncheck sync contact with facebook. Delete all contact and they will resync from your googlemail account.

[Guest]

Hi All,

My contacts storage was taking up 85meg of space, I've now got it down to 57.4meg but this is still ridiculously large.

It seems to be the images that are attached to the contacts that is eating most of that space. Is there any way to keep the numbers in app storage (so they are available even if the SD isn't mounted) and move everything else connected to the SD where there is loads of space?

~S

What did you do to reduce the space ?

The contact thumbnails are under /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/files.

With a symlink you could move them to sd. I think the big contact images are stored in database,

because when you export a contact as vcard the image will be stored inside as base64 stream.

I will have a look to TitaniumBackup, to recognize if there is an other option to reduce needed space.

[Guest MarkT1973]

I have had similar problems. I am betting if you looked at the linked contacts there would be lots of duplication (repeated facebook or google contacts). I am yet to find a solution though.

[Guest fudgeboy]

Hi All,

My contacts storage was taking up 85meg of space, I've now got it down to 57.4meg but this is still ridiculously large.

It seems to be the images that are attached to the contacts that is eating most of that space. Is there any way to keep the numbers in app storage (so they are available even if the SD isn't mounted) and move everything else connected to the SD where there is loads of space?

~S

EDIT: I'm assuming in what I'm writing below that you're not talking about actually removing the sd card, but just unmounting the FAT partition (as happens, for instance, when you connect with the USB cable and choose 'Use as disk drive'). What I've written below will move it to the A2SD partition (if you have one), which is still on the card, but is permanently mounted unless you remove the card from the phone.

Yes.

If you've got A2SD(+) in your ROM, then you'll find that you have an ext2 partition that's being mounted as /system/sd (or is it /system/sdext?). You can move the files to there. Fire up adb shell, and then

cd /data/data

du -s * | sort -n

That will tell you which directories are taking up most space; one of them will be the contacts directory. (Can't remember its exact name, but it'll be obvious.) Move it to /system/sd, and then create a new symlink in here

mv com.android.provider.contacts.storage /system/sd/

ln -s /system/sd/com.android.provider.contacts/storage

I think I've got the name of the directory wrong, but you get the idea.

You can also do this with the HTC mail directory, and it works just fine. Be a little careful: some directories won't like being moved, and you might find you crash an application if you move something that's unhappy. But you can always move it back (delete the symlink, and then mv the directory back to /data/data/).

I've done this with my contacts, with my HTC mail, and with Seesmic. It freed up loads of space. It is maybe a fraction slower starting the mail app, but I have a 32GB class 10 card on its way, which will sort out any lag beautifully.

Let me know if you get stuck.

James

PS The best way to do this is from recovery, but you need to manually mount the /system/sd/ partition first.

PPS Sorry for any minor errors in the names, but I don't have my phone on me to check.

Edited March 14, 2011 by fudgeboy

[Guest Sanukk]

I have had similar problems. I am betting if you looked at the linked contacts there would be lots of duplication (repeated facebook or google contacts). I am yet to find a solution though.

I've just looked at my google contacts via gmail and almost all of them had at least two duplicates. I've been sat for the last two hours or so trying to merge/delete the duplicates. I have never sworn at a web page/computer so much in my life (and that DOES take some doing). I'm sure I've deleted some I wanted to keep as the bloody page kept jumping about every time it refreshed. Just trying a sync now, will report back later if it works.

The other workaround I was thinking of was a HUGE A2SD+ partition, but as everybody is ignoring that thread I've no idea if A2SD+ will work partitions bigger than one gig.

~S

[Guest]

I've just looked at my google contacts via gmail and almost all of them had at least two duplicates. I've been sat for the last two hours or so trying to merge/delete the duplicates. I have never sworn at a web page/computer so much in my life (and that DOES take some doing). I'm sure I've deleted some I wanted to keep as the bloody page kept jumping about every time it refreshed. Just trying a sync now, will report back later if it works.

The other workaround I was thinking of was a HUGE A2SD+ partition, but as everybody is ignoring that thread I've no idea if A2SD+ will work partitions bigger than one gig.

~S

I think the max. size of a2sd+ partition is only limited by filesystem. My a2sd+ partition has a size of 2.11GB.

[Guest Sanukk]

Hi,

No Idea how well well tidying up my Google contacts worked, it was having difficulty syncing, then I lost my bloody phone Doh! Will have to wait for replacement phone before I can check properly.

I think the max. size of a2sd+ partition is only limited by filesystem. My a2sd+ partition has a size of 2.11GB.

Great, thanks for that. How big is your swap partition?

-S

[Guest]

Great, thanks for that. How big is your swap partition?

I do not use a swap partition.

Till yet I have no problems without it.

Actually I transfer my contacts from nokia e51 to my htc (included contact images).

When I am finished, I can tell you something more about database/space usage.

[Guest]

@Sanukk: So, on building up my addressbook, I discovered some strange things.

Under /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/files, android stores thumbnails of contact images even thumbnails from htc sense for facebook.

The strange thing is, that there are images which are not linked in /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts2.db.

So after creating a contact twice or threetimes and remove it, the thumbnails are still there with no link to db.

Thinking about that fact, it could be possible to blow up used space without an easy possibility to remove old ones.

The hard way would be view db with sqlitebrowser and find unused thumbnails.

That is the info for contact thumbnails, the mini pictures on upper left (stored as 72x72px).

The big caller image is stored in contacts2.db as a blob in table "data". For every contact image, there is a record with mimetype value of 4.

The image is stored in column "data15".

--

To reduce your size, try to remove unused thumbnails. In my case, one thumbnail has a average size of 6-7kb.

The funny thing is, I tried same thing on android emulator, but there wasn't a "files" folder or thumbnail. The question for me is, "Is the thumbnail really used or is the upper left thumbnail only a resized version of blob field and the thumbnail file garbage?"