November 7, 2012

Beware the ‘Phone’ Category

Filed under: Main — Tags: — admin @ 12:01 am

It happens often. You create a new contact in your phone. You set a new appointment. Then you go online later to look for that item. It’s not there. What?

Before explaining the situation, understand that it’s not your fault. Well, it sort of is, but it’s a problem that the software developer could easily address.

The nifty thing about Android phones (and tablets) is that your phone’s information — contacts, calendar appointments, stock portfolios, YouTube favorites, Play music/books, and other Googly things — are all synchronized with the Internet.

So you can set an appointment on your phone and it also appears on the Internet or on other Android devices. It’s one of the things that makes using the Android phone so dern handy.

With most of the Googly things you can synchronize, you choose a category for an item. For example, there are multiple calendar categories into which you can place certain events. I have categories for work, personal items, government duties, service organizations and so on. Each category has its own color, which helps me view and organize events.

One of the calendar categories, as well as one of the contact list (address book) categories on many phones is called the Phone category. That’s the problem.

The Phone category is preset to keep your appointments, contacts, bookmarks, or whatever only on the phone. Information set in that category does not get synchronized on the Internet, or with your other Android devices. The category is called “Phone” because it stays on the phone.

I’ve yet to figure out a valid reason why it would be necessary to have a phone-only calendar category, and I don’t really want to sit here for a few minutes racking my brain (it’s too early). But the category exists.

To fix the problem, you just have to remember not to set appointments or create contacts in the Phone category. Sometimes that task is difficult, because some phones preset everything to be in the Phone category.

Stupid phones.

And from what I can tell, there’s no way to remove or suspend the Phone category, either.

So the bottom line is simply — and consciously — try to avoid using the Phone category for your Calendar app appointments and for the address book.

When you do end up with an appointment or contact in the Phone category, edit that item. Choose another category, save, and you’ll be fine. That may be a lot of work, but it’s better than missing an appointment or losing a contact because it’s kept on only one device.

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