[GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Although the Evo is an awesome phone, something not so awesome is that contact pictures sync'd though GMail become blurry and distorted after Google shrinks them down (even if you add a high quality contact photo)

EXAMPLE:

http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t...mparison-1.png

Anyone who had added contact pictures only to have them automatically resized and pretty much rendered useless, this is the guide which will help you maintain your GMail contacts, the ability to sync, and the ability to maintain a high resolution photo for caller ID as well as contact icon. NOTE: This is for static images selected for contacts and has not been tested for Facebook linked contacts.

STEP 1: If you have contacts in your phone, export them to your SD Card into a .Vcard file (this can be done though the phone and it is always good to back them up anyway) Delete all contacts on the phone under your "Phone" account but leave the ones under the "Google" account.

STEP 2: Log into your GMail account and go to Contacts. Remove all photos which are stored in your GMail contacts online as these are the bad ones which have already been resized. You can remove them by clicking on the photo and then selecting No Photo/Remove Photo. Export your Google contacts to a .Vcard file and name it "Google Contacts" or whatever you prefer.

Step 3: With all of the bad photos removed, gather your high res contact photos and place them into a folder (I made one called "Contact Pictures) and transfer that folder to your phones SD Card.

STEP 4: Now on your phone, Go to People>Menu>View and select "Phone" and you should see no contacts in the list other than your personal contact card.

STEP 5: Create a new "Phone" contact for each person who has a photo and name the new contact exactly the same as it appears in your Google GMail account. Add their photo through the gallery (you can stretch the green square to fit your image). DO NOT add any of the phone numbers or info into the Phone contacts, ONLY photos. Now back up your Phone contacts to your SD card by creating a .Vcard file and name it "Phone Contacts" or whatever you prefer. You should now have two separate .Vcard files, one with all of your contacts and all info, and one for each individual who has a photo.

STEP 6: Under View, now check off both "Google & Phone" so that ALL contacts on the phone show. You will now have a duplicate for each contact with a photo. Select either one of the duplicate entries and at the top right corner will be a button which says "Link." Link the contacts together and you now have a high resolution contact photo for your contacts and no duplicate entry and the high resolution photo will stick even after the phone syncs your contacts (since there is no photo stored for the contact under Google, there is no photo for Google to mess up) Repeat for all other photo contacts.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Another method if you don't care about syncing contacts with Google or use another program.

Settings
Accounts & Sync
Gmail
uncheck sync contacts

Just tried it and it works. Thanks to OP for figuring out what the heck was doing that!

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

My main reason for wanting to maintain the sync to Google is that whenever you press the magnifying glass right softkey and hold, you can voice dial straight from there rather than going to voice dialer as well as to maintain any changes you may make. **Google connects to the internet immediately upon pressing the magnfying glass and if it see's a matched contact when you say "Call John Smith..." it will dial them.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Thanks for the write up Chris. Its a shame so many steps have to be taken to get a decent looking contact pic...

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Thanks for this method, I don't really feel like going through all those steps and don't care if my contacts are constantly synced, they are saved so I am good with backup. Thanks to OP for the step by step instx as well.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I agree that this is something Google needs to address, but for now at least we have a working solution.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Thanks so much! This is something I have been looking for.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Chris,
If you first sync your contacts with google (so then the voice dial works) then uncheck the sync contacts with gmail you will still have voice dial.

Of course you would need to re sync with google when you added a new contact but then you can uncheck after adding in the new contact. But then when you did the sync google would kill the previous pictures.

Anyways that's another kinda work around. I just tested and I do have voice dial by holding down search with my contacts.

BTW: Coming off of my old Touch Pro I freaking love this thing!! I've only had to do like a dozen mods to it opposed to a few hundred! :))

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Very true that you can sync and then disable sync and still have vioice calling straight from the quick search softkey however the first time you sync all of your hard work will be gone and google will resize all of your pictures. The way I have it is so that when I want to add a new contact, I will add them to "Google" and add all of the info there just no photo, then make an identically named contact in "Phone" and add a photo only and then link them. This way you can still sync any informaiton on-the-go and it will be reflected within GMail.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Ive seen similar steps on other sites for this issue, but ive never synced my contacts with google. From day one ive only used htc sync to transfer my contacts. I did this linked method and my pictures keep reverting back to low res

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

If you have a Gmail account then it will sync your contacts unless you go into the settings and tell it not to. It happens without your knowledge or consent if you are using a gmail account.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Sorry im aware that when you setup a gmail that contact sync is setup by default. That is disabled, there are no contacts online in my gmail account.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

*king* that is weird! After you disabled google sync did you add the good pictures back in? Did you notice when they changed again to low res? Did you reset the phone? Do you have any 3rd party program installed that might be interacting with your contacts or email?

I'm not trying to imply you did or didn't do something just don't know what is causing this so all I can thing to do is ask questions and hope to stumble onto the answer.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Very nice find adding this to my stickied post, linked to yours. And thanked!

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Thank You & Thanked Chris
I have been beating my head against the wall all morning and a little searching turned this up. What total bullshit you have to do all this crap just to have a nice photo stick.

It first started bothering me when I noticed how low resolution the facebook pics are. Well the phone would always override whatever I set with facebook. I ended up shutting off facebook all together plus it's annoying it's always trying to update. I still have the ap if I want to check facebook.

I hope they come out with a fix for this. Google should let you store high resolution pictures and there should be a choice to override the google photo with your own and not have it come back during a re-sync.

Set up some primary people with better resolution photos.

Thanks again for the write up

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I did reset the device due to another issue, currently the only app i installed iss spare parts and the qik update. I have completly removed the contacts from the device and resynced. I can add a pic in outlook, sync, and the pic will be fuzzy or i can just add tapply a pic from the phone and have the same effect.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

*king*
It could be outlook doing the same thing as google. Try having it not sync with outlook add a good picture from the phone to a contact and then see if it stays. I do believe outlook will sync contact pictures and they are low res as well.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I stopped syncing alltogether. With the ability to export to .Vcard I just back up my contacts to my SD Card every now and again and I am good to go.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Make sure that when you sign into Google Gmail there are "0" contacts showing in all contacts view. If your pics are still fuzzy, then I would recommend adding your high res photos over again and then backing up your contacts.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

im my gmail account i have zeros for "my contacts" and "all contacts"

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Then the only thing left to do is make sure that you redo your high res photos. There is no reason that they should not stick if you don't have any GMail contacts. I exported all of my contacts to my SD Card, deleted them all, and imported just to make sure the high res photos stay and they do.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I agree. If you put good pictures on again and they go low res check and re check every setting and hopefully that's it if not report back and we'll do old school on this sucker!

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Will the picture be overwritten if your friends change their pic on facebook. How do you make it stick if it does?

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

So does anyone know the optimal resolution for contact pics? I did most of mine at 500x500 which I think is more than enough.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I use 300x300 and the pictures look great

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Yea I figured 500 was a little overkill but I ended up re-doing my contact pics from mt TP2 so I wanted them as big as possible. They work just fine and look great but just wanted to see what other people were using.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I talking my contact pictures from an 18MP photo. I'm not using the whole thing but it doesn't matter when the phones says saving it is resizing the photo. The only way you will have a problem is if you use too small of a photo and you'll know cause it look like crap.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Thanks Chris, works like a charm. I only have 140 contacts, so it wasnt too bad. Now Im not embarrassed when the phone rings ;).... Love my EVO!

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

what i did was:

1. remove pict from google gmail under contacts
2. sync facebook
3. sync gmail contacts

boom back to nice images again
looks like my TP2 sync facebook images with gmail images and didnt overwrite them after i switch to evo or maybe it did but kept some lower resolution specs on photos

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

My contacts do the same thing with HTC sync.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

No problem and glad it's working out for everyone.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

It works if you take a pic with the phone and then set the pic as the contact photo.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

I have the Hero, and i remember seeing this on 1.5. But now that i have upgraded to 2.1 i dont see that option for Gmail so i could uncheck sync contacts. Do you know what i need to do to see this option? Thanks.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Hi,

Is there a way to make this work if your using Outlook / Exchange 2007 vs using Gmail? I am having this same issue but I dont use Gmail.

Thanks,
Rich

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

What a beautiful method. So involved, and it works. Thank you.

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Is there a .apk to do this??

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Me too...anyone know how this can work with Outlook contacts?

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

This is also happening with pictures taken from the phone. Is there a fix for that?

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

most of my digital cam pics are 1024x768 so just for kicks i downloaded a picture that was 2400x3600 and its still fuzzy. Maybe something else on my sd is causing the problem

Re: [GUIDE] Keep High Resolution Photos For Caller ID
 

Its not likely the SD card. i have 2 evos, i swapped my sd cards and it didn't make a difference.On 1 evo the pics are perfect, on my other 1, no matter what i do, no matter where the pic comes from, when I set it as a contact photo its fuzzy. I messed with the cropping and no luck. I have no pics synced with Gmail. Can any1 tell me why the 1 evo is good and the other fuzzy?both pics properties read exactly the same.