Newbie question about market and contacts

xdevnull · 05-19-2009, 12:35 PM

So I got my phone and am enjoying it. Really like all the apps...blah blah. But I have a couple questions.

1. The market. I only have free apps coming up. Supposedly you can press menu>view> and choose to see paid/free apps. However when I press menu there is no "view" option. I was looking for a .pdf viewer, and apparently there is one out there, but it won't come up in the market? Don't they want my money?

2. How do I edit a contacts group? I've looked for the option and can't find it. I use groups a lot to manage my big address book, and it would be nice if when I added a person to my phone I could put them in a group rather than wait until I am at a computer and hopefully remember to add them. Am I missing something or is this the only PDA in the history of technology that doesn't allow you to put contacts in groups???

Thanks for your patience.

PunkZanyJ · 05-19-2009, 05:50 PM

sounds like you don't have the current (not 1.5) update as the paid apps and switching views appeared with that update.

Contact groups have to be edited in gmail on your pc/mac. They don't appear to have that ability on the phone yet.

xdevnull · 05-19-2009, 06:13 PM

Thanks. Yeah I got it just a few days ago, says version 1.0.

contacts...grrr...I'm a bit speechless that they would release it without that ability.

PunkZanyJ · 05-19-2009, 06:49 PM

my last phone couldn't create contact groups period, so I'm not bothered by it. Knowing google they will eventually add this functionality. They're always improving their products, so it's not a question of "if" they'll do something, it's "when". Considering the OS has been out less than a year and has had 3 updates, I'd say it's not a big deal. Not when you consider that I had a WinMo phone for over a year and didn't get any updates at all -- and there was PLENTY that could've been improved.

xdevnull · 05-19-2009, 07:33 PM

I here what you're saying...but the thing is android supports groups (they aren't implemented very elegantly, and the three important groups you can't delete (family/friends/co-workers) don't show up !?!). Why would you make groups available and then not make them editable. It just seems half baked. I hope 1.5 resolves this. I can't imagine it would be difficult to implement.

PunkZanyJ · 05-20-2009, 11:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xdevnull

I here what you're saying...but the thing is android supports groups (they aren't implemented very elegantly, and the three important groups you can't delete (family/friends/co-workers) don't show up !?!). Why would you make groups available and then not make them editable. It just seems half baked. I hope 1.5 resolves this. I can't imagine it would be difficult to implement.

One of the things to remember is that Android is developed by the Android Group, the Contacts group is probably a separate group, the gmail mobile app for android is a separate group, the java(?) gmail app is a separate group, and the gmail mobile browser is a separate group, and the gmail pc/mac browser is a separate group. All these different teams working separately on similar, but distinctly different applications that access the same groups of data. They'll have different priorities, timetables, and be looking at the application from a different perspective. When gmail started letting you create groups, they probably had no idea it would be used to organize phone contacts.

1.5 may not address this issue (there are lists of what features are coming in 1.5, I don't recall this being in the list) but it will be addressed at some point. In the meantime, you may want to go to android.com and see where you can make a suggestion about this. They may be entirely unaware that this is an issue for people. If they don't know, they won't get to it until they do know about it. Hasn't been one for me, didn't even know about it until I saw your question.

Google seems to have as part of their work, an interest in finding out how people use their products, and developing tweaks and fixes in making things more functional for their users. That's why they collect and store so much data on their users. Some people think it's a big spy thing, but actually they learn from us how to make their products better based on what we do with them.

xdevnull · 05-20-2009, 11:59 AM

Ok. I found an app call aContacts that lets you manage groups. I added two groups called My Family and My Friends and moved the appropriate people. It's a bit of a hack, but at least it's a work around. There are things about aContacts that are better and worse than the default, but that's life. aContacts is free.

I dug around the android.com site a bit as well as the google mobile help. The forums weren't what I was expecting. Hard to find a roadmap, and like you said, none of the feature lists for android that I have seen say anything other than "enhancements to contacts." Anyway, I guess I've hacked it well enough for now. I'll just wait for cupcake and see what shakes out from there. Hopefully aContacts will work with cupcake.