Easy way to put avatars on your Android contacts

Compare "before" and "after."

Exploring the capabilities of my new HTC Hero immediately after it was acquired (Lisa, thanks for the gift!), I noticed the closest integration with social services on the very first day. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr ... Not so long ago VKontakte was added to this list. The idea to download and put avatars to contacts from the phone book is born by itself!

How to do it, and what else did I get from the integration with social networks under the cat.

We put photos as avatars.

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In order to put photos there is a simple way to boot - go to contact editing and just take a photo of the right person or select his photo from the gallery. But this is not our way. We want everyone to have pictures, and preferably immediately =). You can download all the necessary avatars, but again - for a long time. We will save the synchronization of accounts.

Adding a Facebook / VK account

If all friends are on Facebook, it's simple for owners of HTC smartphones. HTC has already taken care of this opportunity, go to Settings-> Accounts and sync-> Add account and add your Facebook account. In order for VKontakte to appear on this list, you will have to download, install and configure the VKontakte Sync application (link at the end of the article).



Unlike Facebook for HTC Sence, VKontakte Sync has several useful settings. For example, the ability to synchronize only some lists of VK friends will be very relevant if there are more than a hundred friends. You can also set the phone to check for plausibility, so that those who in the "Phone" column write "Panasonic" do not clutter up your address book =).

We connect contacts

After the synchronization is complete, we can evaluate the results. Go to All Apps-> Contacts-> Menu-> View . (All actions are described for HTC Hero with Android 2.1. Not all functions and settings may be available on other phones.)



Here we added lines corresponding to facebook and contact (yes, in the application, not everything is smooth, but the author periodically releases updates).

We remove the checkmarks from the contacts from the phone, google and sim card. Click "Finish" and see the list of newly added contacts. Half done. One “but” - many in the social networks do not indicate their phone, so in order to use these contacts we will connect them with those already in the phone. Go to the first contact list. If the phone number is specified and the same number is saved in the phone's address book, we will see a “Link” button with a number in the green circle. (it will also appear if the name and surname match the saved ones) If the phone is not specified, or it is not in the phone book, then there will be an incomprehensible pictogram and signature of “Facebook” or “Phone” in this place. Anyway, click on it and select the proposed contact or look for yourself, after that the message “Link is established” appears. Repeat the procedure for each added contact (done once). All information will be updated automatically according to your account settings.

Contacts from Facebook can be linked more easily. To do this, in the contact from the phone book, on the “Updates and Events” or “Photos” tab, select “Link Facebook Profile” and specify the profile.

Differences of applications for importing contacts from Facebook and VKontakte

Social network	Facebook	In contact with
The program is written	HTC	rook.spb
Program readiness	Release	Beta
The photo	Marked with [f]	No mark. There is a choice of size small, medium, large
Adds to the phone	All contacts	All / only with phones / only from selected lists
Photo Albums and Events	There are corresponding tabs	Not
Birthday	Yes, it is marked [f]	there is
Profile link	there is	Not everywhere (no on Hero)

A couple more screenshots

And the link to download VKontakte Sync

UPD link to download from the market (for those who read Habr from the phone) and another one for those for whom the market for some reason does not work.
UPD 2 Found application developer, meet gravel
Shl. The application is available only with version 2.1 of Android