Android lost contacts recovering

[alii98]

Hi,my dad got a new phone,and he put the SIM in his new one
He connected the gmail account too,but for some reason there are barely a few contacts
And when I tried taking some of my contacts from my google account to his,it said that the SIM card is full,despite only being able to see like 10-20 contacts
I tried doing the google contact thing,but only a contact shows up?
Can anyone help me?
I wouldn't really like to root at all,but if it's my only option and if the warranty isn't worth it,I could do it,but idk

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Does he have Facebook on the old one with an active account? Facebook steals all of your mobile contacts, transfers them to the Facebook ecosystem and deletes them from your phone. That is at least what they used to do and I doubt they've changed. That happened to me, so obviously no more Facebook apps or messengers on my devices.

 

[alii98]

yeah
but he had an even older phone,and when he changed to the now old phone the contacts were there?

 

[therealduckofdeath]

If he does have Facebook, didn't they show up after you activated it on the new phone?
I agree that the way Android asks where contacts you create are to be saved is a bit broken/outdated. Getting a pop-up on every occasion with a long list of semi-cryptic options. I wonder why that haven't been streamlined yet to make it a default system setting?
Personally, I manually copied the ones I wanted to keep. Though, I didn't really bother copying that many. If you have hundreds of contacts that's obviously not an option. I bet there is some sort of app to migrate contacts on the play store. We can't be the only two who's ever experienced this. \o/

 

[therealduckofdeath]

One idea. Does his new phone come with some sort of "transfer your stuff" application or service? Like, Samsung's Smart Switch. That might work.

 

[alii98]

no,but I tried transferring from his phone to the new one
but the contacts are like hidden in the SIM

 

[therealduckofdeath]

In the old phone's contact list, when you view/edit the details of contacts, how are they shown as "linked"? Does it say SIM there? I'm just asking as it sounds a bit odd that they're still on the SIM as modern contact information doesn't fit properly on the old SIM card format. On mine for instance it says "Samsung Account" and "Google Account", as I used to use Google for them but lately have been saving all to Samsung's account function.

 

[alii98]

I have a few on the SIM and the rest on google
but the SIM,I told you,it's max,but supports 250 contacts,but I put in it only like 30 contacts
so something happened,and they are hidden
my father told me that it happened once to him this
but he somehow got them uncovered

 

[therealduckofdeath]

If they really are on the SIM card, try this, to export them to the SD card and then import it to whichever ecosystem you prefer, the one in the example shows how to import to Google: https/android.stackexchange.com/questions/26826/transfer-all-contacts-in-phone-and-sim-to-google-contacts#27258

 

[alii98]

i tried
but there were only a few
it's like they are hidden and locked somewhere
and I can't access them

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Does he have some sort of SIM card pin code enabled on the old phone? Maybe that would prevent a contacts app from bulk exporting?

 

[alii98]

Yeah,he has,but I didn't see an option to enter the pin code

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Try disabling the PIN before you export, just to see if it's the code locking the contacts:
https/www.digitalcitizen.life/how-change-or-remove-sim-pin-android-2-steps

 

[alii98]

apparently it was for another sim,but this one still has something weird

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Whelp... I'm out of ideas then \o/
Manual copy typing them into Outlook/Google/His mail client could work as it's "only" 30. That might be done in a half hour.

 

[alii98]

I guess the only option is to either go to somewhere specialised or just do nothing
thanks for the help

 

[therealduckofdeath]

Yeah, searching whichever manufacturer's forums for something similar could help. It could be a(n unintended) feature for that specific firmware.