[HD2 General] GweiloHKG:
HD2 with ROM version 1.48.831.0 *71294) WWE. I've just gotten off the phone with HTC support and confirmed that, for Hong Kong English with Chinese functionality, this is the very latest version ROM available.

I have a contact list of ~370 entries. For me the standard 'Search Contacts' functionality works for >90% of my searches.

An acquaintance asked if I would help him by loading his contacts to my HD2 to see if this phone could take the place of his Treo. He has 8,867 (yes, eight thousand eight hundred sixty-seven) contacts....

I'm providing full details to support my issue below. I will include the questions here so not everyone has to read my ramblings.

1. Are there any tweaks that may help to improve the performance of Search Phone vis-a-vis Contacts?

2. Any indexing that could be performed on the phone to improve these search?

3. Any known issues at HTC regarding this function?

4. Any alternative programs that would be better suited to handling this volume of contacts compared to Outlook? The end-user is non-technical so a GUI is required.

Steps taken:

I backed up my own data (Sprite Backup) and then performed a hard reset.

The initial Outlook to Phone sync took 1-hour and three minutes. The Outlook PST contains only 8,867 contacts - there are no calendar, tasks or note entries. No Mobile Favorites or Files are being synced.

The sync is reported as Successful. I power off the phone and back on. I wait at least 60 seconds before attempting to do anything. The default backlight off setting is 60 seconds so I have to wake the phone by touching the hang-up button. Slide button to the right to unlock (no password defined).

I touch the Contacts Home Screen Tab. I have 3x3 blank tabs. I click the All People link at the bottom left. It takes 10-seconds before I see the first six contacts (New + Me + 6). I click the 'Z' index at the bottom right and see that I do have contacts that begin with the letter Z. I assume I really do have the 8,867 contacts in the phone.

This acquaintance has built up his contacts over the length of his professional left. He is accustomed to using his Treo to search the data in

all contact records fields

, not just the contact name or company name fields.

I select one of his contacts at random (letter M index, first record) and note that it includes the word 'middle' in an address field. This will be my Phone Search keyword.

From the Phone Search program....

Search for: middle

Type: Contacts

I click the Search link at the bottom left.

The first time I followed the steps above, I did receive results, but only partial - contacts from A to C. The M contact that I extrated the keyword from was not included. At that point I figured I better check to make sure I had the latest ROM, see what tweaks might be available here or see if I should consider a different contact management program.

Having spent a fair bit of time searching these forums I have not found anything that seems to be related to this issue.

In preparing this message I have repeated the steps above after a soft reset. From the time I clicked the Search link to now it has been more than 13 minutes. Noting has been displayed in the Results window (except 'Searching...'). Each time the backlight has dimmed I have touched a single time in the results window to keep the phone from going to sleep.

My questions:

1. Are there any tweaks that may help to improve the performance of Phone Search vis-a-vis Contacts?

2. Any indexing that could be performed on the phone to improve search functions?

3. Any known issues at HTC regarding this function?

4. Any alternative programs that would be better suited to handling this volume of contacts compared to Outlook? The end-user is non-technical so a GUI is required.

Hey wait - I just received a

complete set of results

- after a delay of

20-minutes

. The results include contacts from A thru Z. I had continued to touch the screen after each dimming while preparing this message. Could hardly believe my eyes when results were returned. FWIW searching contacts in Outlook for 'middle' takes less than 60-seconds to return 84 records.

My list of questions remain as above.

TIA for reading this far and for all suggestions!

Rob