[Nexus S Android Development] HyperEscape:
Hello CyberGR,

I am a very new entry to the android world with first phone as Samsung Google Nexus S, and found your excellent work on ROM and Kernels and been using them since.

Apart from other annoyances in the standard stock Samsung ROM , there is none more frustrating for me that the Contact application behavior.

Let me explain to you in short with back ground :

1. The google contacts have a number of default contact groups, out of which the main one is "My Contacts" which supposedly a selection of contacts with a specific purpose. For example when I had a Nokia Phone, I used the symbian application "MailforExchange", which synced the contacts between the phone and the google account ONLY for the selected "My Contacts" group. There is also a group by the name of "Starred in Android" however I dont see any practical usage of it in my typical usage scenario. Rest of the contacts which are automatically added are added to the "Other Contacts" group.

2. I use Gmail to email any new contacts and also to reply to incoming mails. By Gmail's default setting (which I can change) all the new contacts email addresses are automatically added to the contact group "Other Contacts" , so they can pop up as auto complete addresses whenever I am writing a new email. This does help, however creates a new problem with Samsung GNS.

3. Now like any regular sane mobile phone user on the planet, not all of the people in my google contacts list (either email only or with all details like mobile number) are actually the people I would like to keep as a contact in the mobile, whom I can or I would actually CALL from the android phone. Of course there is only selected set of individuals for which I have all the details like mobile number and I would only like to keep them as contacts on the android phone. For example my gmail contacts list might contain 1200 contacts (actually having email address only) , however I have only 120 people (with mobile number details) I would like to keep as a contact on the mobile phone.

4. Based on the automatic functionality mentioned in point no. 2, All new contacts to whom I only just send an email are synced with the android phone and clutter the contact list. These are the contacts I would like to keep as an email only contact in the "Other Contacts" however I dont want them synced on to the Android Phone.

5. Apparently the SGNS does not have any option to select which contacts group is to be SYNCED with the mobile phone. I either syncs all of them in all groups or none. Proof of concept is that even if there is a new contact added in the "Other Contacts" group because on my web email activity, few minutes later it would appear in the android phone contacts list as well, without any mobile number.

6. In SGNS there an in option of which contact to DISPLAY in the contact list, it only controls the display (sort of a visual filter) and hence does actually stops the phone from syncing all the contacts. Conversely if I delete any unwanted contact from the phone, they are also deleted from the "Other Contacts" group , something which I might not want in all the situations.

7. I wish to be able to SYNC only a particular GROUP of the main google contacts database to keep the contacts organized. From whatever I have read this functionality is available in the SENSE UI on HTC and maybe on MOTOROLA UI , but no where to be found in SAMSUNG ROMS.

So i just wonder that would it be somehow possible in your upcoming ROM to have this functionality to selectively sync a particular contact group on the Android Phone and leave the rest.

Thanks for reading though.

Hoping for a working solution something like mentioned in this post (but only for Sony Ericsson / HTC ) http://androinica.com/2010/04/tips-trim-your-bloated-contacts-list-with-a-custom-sync-group/