Sometimes users of Migration+ pick “My Device” by mistake when importing and really want their contacts to sync with their Gmail account. If this happens, there is an easy fix that doesn’t require buying more Migration+ credits. The general idea is to backup your contacts from “My Device” then import them to your Gmail account on the Android phone – all of this can be done locally once you’ve imported the contacts to any account on your Android device using Migration+.
Here are the steps to do a local backup and restore:
BACKUP PROCESS
1) Open the “Contacts” app
2) Hit the settings button and select “Import/Export”
3) Select “Export to SD card” (alternatively called “Export to USB storage” on some phones) then hit the OK button to confirm
DELETE PROCESS
NOTE – you need to do this so that you don’t have duplicate entries in your address book.
1) Open the “Contacts” app
2) Hit the settings button then select “Delete”
3) Tick the “Select All” checkbox at the top of the contacts list
4) Hit the “Delete” button at the top of the screen
RE-IMPORT PROCESS
1) Open the “Contacts” app
2) Hit the settings button and select “Import/Export”
3) Select “Import from SD card” (alternatively called “Import from USB storage” on some phones) then hit the OK button to confirm.
4) Select the Gmail account you want to import the contacts to
5) Wait for the search process to finish. If you have multiple exports, it may ask you to confirm which file you want to use – select the file you just exported.
After this process completes, it will take a few minutes to sync all those contacts with your Gmail Contacts in the cloud. If you want to check on the progress of this, you can do this:
1) Click the Settings button
2) Under the Accounts section, choose Gmail
3) Look for the account you imported contacts to and see if it’s listed as “Synching” if not, the process should be complete. If you check your Gmail Contacts in a browser and they are still not listed there, but Synching is not occuring, click on the Gmail account in that list then un-tick the checkbox for Sync Contacts, then recheck it. This should restart the process.
NOTE – We’ve found that sometimes Google Synching doesn’t work if a lot of changes are made to contacts in a short period of time. If this happens, we’ve found just leaving the contacts alone for 24 hours, then retrying the above 3 steps typically works to resolve the issue.
Category Archives: Random Thoughts
Android Migration+ Mobile Information Random Thoughts transfer contacts from android transfer contacts to androidHow To Import Android Phone Contacts to Gmail Contacts
February 11, 2013 – 10:14 am
How to Request a Refund on iTunes
January 25, 2013 – 4:05 pm
If for some reason our app doesn’t work for you, we can help issue a refund on Google. However, Apple doesn’t offer us the same functionality (to issue refunds). If you made your purchase via Apple, here is how you can request a refund:
1) Find your receipt. Your receipt will be emailed to you at whatever address is associated with your Apple ID. Below is an example.
2) Click on the “Report a Problem” link (circled in red in the image above).
3) Select a Problem reason and type in any commentary, then click the Submit button.
How to Resolve the “Sign in Failed, Please Try Again” Error for Migration+ on BlackBerry
August 9, 2012 – 2:33 pm
There are a few possible root causes to this:
1) The network connection is unavailable on the phone. You can confirm this is the root cause by opening a browser and trying to browse the web. If you’re unable to, this is probably the issue. I’d recommend trying a wifi connection if this is observed. We can try other troubleshooting if you cannot try a wifi connection.
2) The network connection is unavailable to the application. When you first install our app it asks to allow permissions related to the network, interaction, etc. If you do not set the network connection to allow, our app will not be able to communicate. You can validate the settings for our app by going to: Options -> Device -> Application Management -> MigrationPlus -> Edit Permissions. The Connections permission should be set to ALLOW.
3) HTTPS is blocked on your network connection. Sometimes if your traffic is flowing through a proxy/business server it may block certain protocols. You can test this by trying to access https://mail.google.com from a browser. If you are unable to get there, but you are able to get to other http webpages (e.g. http://www.google.com) then this is the root cause. Best solution here is to try a wifi connection that uses a normal consumer broadband internet connection.
If you try all of these and are still having issues, please email me (colin@intuvio.com) and let me know the results of each test.
UPDATED List of Known Working Devices
August 8, 2012 – 1:09 pm
Again to help provide some validation to our future customers, here’s a list of devices that have successfully used our contact migration app services!
Blackberry Bold (9330)
Blackberry Bold (9700)
Blackberry Bold (9780)
Blackberry Bold (9790)
Blackberry Bold (9900)
Blackberry Bold (9930)
Blackberry Curve (8250)
Blackberry Curve (8350)
Blackberry Curve (9220)
Blackberry Curve (9310)
Blackberry Curve (9320)
Blackberry Curve (9350)
Blackberry Curve (9360)
Blackberry Curve (9370)
Blackberry Curve (9380)
Blackberry Pearl (8100)
Blackberry Pearl (8120)
Blackberry Pearl Flip (8220)
Blackberry Pearl Flip (8230)
Blackberry Porsche Design (9981)
Blackberry Storm 2 (9550)
Blackberry Torch (9810)
Blackberry Torch (9850)
Blackberry Torch (9860)
Blackberry Tour (9630)
HTC (Desire HD)
HTC Desire (HTC Desire)
HTC Desire S (HTC Desire S)
HTC Desire Z (T-Mobile G2)
HTC Droid Incredible (ADR6300)
HTC Droid Incredible 2 (ADR6350)
HTC Evo 3D (PG86100)
HTC Evo 4G (PC36100)
HTC Glacier (HTC Glacier)
HTC Legend (HTC Legend)
HTC One S (HTC One S)
HTC One X (HTC One X)
HTC Shift 4G (PG06100)
HTC ThunderBolt 4G (ADR6400L)
HTC Vivid 4G (HTC PH39100)
HTC Wildfire (HTC Wildfire)
Huawei Mercury (M886)
iPad (iPad)
iPad 2 (GSM) (iPad 2 (GSM))
iPad 2 (iPad 2)
iPad 2 (WiFi) (iPad 2 (WiFi))
iPad3 (iPad3,3)
iphone (iphone)
iPhone 3GS (iPhone 3GS)
iPhone 4 (iPhone 4)
iphone3 (iphone3)
iPhone4 (iPhone4)
iPhone4s (iPhone4,1)
iPod Touch (iPod Touch 4G)
Kindle Fire (Kindle Fire)
LG Enlighten (LG-VS700)
LG Esteem (LG-MS910)
LG G2X (LG-P999)
LG MyTouch (LG-E739)
LG Optimus 2X (LG-P990)
LG Optimus 3D (LG-P925g)
LG Optimus L7 (LG-P705)
LG Optimus One (LG-P500h)
LG Optimus S (LS670)
LG Optimus T (LG-P509)
LG Optimus U (LG-US670)
LG Optimus V (VM670)
LG Phoenix (LG-P505R)
LG Spectrum (VS920 4G)
LG Thrive (LG-P506)
Motorola (DROID BIONIC)
Motorola (DROID Pro)
Motorola (DROID RAZR)
Motorola (DROID X2)
Motorola (Droid)
Motorola (DROID2 GLOBAL)
Motorola (DROID2)
Motorola (DROID3)
Motorola (DROIDX)
Motorola Atrix (MB860)
Motorola Atrix 2 (MB865)
Motorola Defy (MB525)
Motorola Milestone 3 4G (XT860)
Motorola Milestone X (Milestone X)
Motorola Milestone X2 (Milestone X2)
Motorola Photon 4G (MB855)
Motorola Triumph (MOTWX435KT)
Samsung Admire (SCH-R720)
Samsung Ancora or Samsung Galaxy W (GT-I8150)
Samsung and Google (Galaxy Nexus)
Samsung Epic Galaxy S 4G (SPH-D700)
Samsung Fascinate (SCH-I500)
Samsung Galaxy 551 (GT-I5510)
Samsung Galaxy Ace (GT-S5830)
Samsung Galaxy Fit (GT-S5670)
Samsung Galaxy Indulge (SCH-R910)
Samsung Galaxy Mini (GT-S5570B)
Samsung Galaxy Note (GT-N7000)
Samsung Galaxy Note (SGH-I717M)
Samsung Galaxy Player (YP-G1)
Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000)
Samsung Galaxy S 4G (SGH-T959V)
Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100)
Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100G)
Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100T)
Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9210T)
Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 (SGH-I727R)
Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 (SGH-T989)
Samsung Galaxy S III or Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300)
Samsung Galaxy S III or Samsung Galaxy S3 (GT-I9300T)
Samsung Galaxy S Plus (GT-I9001)
Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant (SGH-T959)
Samsung Galaxy S3 (SCH-I535)
Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P1000)
Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P3100)
Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P6200)
Samsung Galaxy Tab (GT-P7510)
Samsung Intercept (SPH-M910)
Samsung Stealth V 4G (SCH-I510)
Samsung Stratosphere (SCH-I405)
Sasung Galaxy Y Duos (GT-S6102)
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc (LT15a)
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc (LT15i)
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S (LT18i)
Sony Ericsson Xperia S (LT26i)
Toshiba Tablet (AT100)
HTC One X and HTC One S – Issue with Migration+ Fixed
August 8, 2012 – 12:32 pm
There was a recent issue using Migration+ to import contacts to HTC One X and HTC One S. Luckily we fixed it and have already published a new version for Android on both Amazon and Google Play. There was a layer of logic HTC put into their customized software on these phones that changed some normal Android API use for the address book (contacts). One of the issue was that we were not getting a normal “Null pointer exception” error if particular fields were blank…instead it was giving other exceptions.
If any of our fellow developers out there are struggling with this one, take two steps
1) Send HTC some feedback for adding (undocumented) customization/restrictions to normal android APIs
2) Send us a mail if you need help solving it
Consumer SmartPhone Contacts Analysis (June 2012)
June 11, 2012 – 2:17 pm
Migration+ has been out since mid-March 2012 and now that we have a pretty nice set of data to look at, we’ve found some interesting trends that we’d like to share.
- At the time of this post we’ve had 3,100 users of Migration+. We’ve had a pretty significant ramp up. We’ve had more users week over week, which is encouraging for us.
- We’ve seen average of ~445 contacts per user. This is many more than I would have expected. I myself only have around 125 contacts in my phone and I consider that a bit excessive. However, it does fall nicely into something called Dunbar’s Number which says that the average human can only have social relationships with 100-230 people (with 150 as a commonly used reference number). So why does our average customer have so many!? We have a few theories on this, but that’s another post. Even crazier than the average, we had a user migrate 8,269 contacts and at the current count we have 58 users that migrated over 1000 contacts in ONE migration!
- OS Distribution:
- ~13.1% of users are migrating contacts FROM Android. Our average user moving FROM Android has 499 contacts.
- ~86.6% of users are migrating contacts FROM iOS. Our average user moving FROM iOS has 434 contacts.
- ~.3% of users are migrating contacts FROM Blackberry (worth noting that we have only recently released a version of Blackberry and it’s limited functionality). Our average user moving FROM Blackberry has 456 contacts.
- Generally speaking the majority of contact transfers are going TO Android.
- We’ve worked on over 60 unique smart phone models. The great news for users is that Migration+ typically works best on the newest models.
- What countries are using our app to migrate contacts? We have a nice map representing country based use posted here. At a high level, the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe are our big users.
We hope to continue sharing interesting information like this with those of you who are interested.
Migration+ on BlackBerry RELEASED (May 11, 2012)!
May 11, 2012 – 10:28 am
Great news! The BlackBerry version of our app, Migration+, has been released today on BlackBerry App World. You can view it and download it here: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/108491/?lang=en
This version is missing a few features present in the iOS and Android version (e.g. Help and Buy Credits). We plan to release an update in the near future that will include these features. After that – Windows Phone!
If you have any feedback on our BlackBerry version, feel free to email me.
Migration+ on Blackberry: SUBMITTED FOR REVIEW
May 1, 2012 – 3:15 pm
Great news! Today we submitted our BlackBerry app for review this afternoon. Based on some quick Googling though, it may take up to 3 weeks for the review process to complete. The initial version will include a very basic set of features:
- Export Contacts (requires 1 credit)
- Import Contacts (requires 1 credit)
- Sign In/Sign Out
For the initial version, the ability to do in-app purchase for credits will not be available. Credits will need to be purchased via the Android or iPhone version of the app. Other features such as the help options and remove contacts will also be released in a future version.
If anyone is interested in testing out the Blackberry version of our app, please email Colin – we’ll provide free credits if you’re willing to give us feedback!
Why Google Play Search Results Suck
April 17, 2012 – 8:49 am
Yes that’s right, search results for Google Play suck! The apps displayed in results are consistently irrelevant to the topic searched and the search results are most certainly not appropriately ordered to give users relevant results for their search terms. On top of the fact that the search results suck, SEO for Google Play is a black box which makes it even more frustrating.
Since we launched Migration+ in early March on both the Apple App Store and Google Play (formerly Android Market) we’ve spent a bit of time trying to optimize how our app gets found by users. After recently reading a TNW article about Instragram being buried in Google Play results, I decided it may be valuable to detail our efforts in this area to illustrate how challenging it really is for a startup in this space.
In the first version we published on both the App Store and Google Play, we naively published a simple paragraph about our app. For the Apple App Store we put in keywords describing what we wanted the app to be (i.e. move docs, sms, etc.) not what it was at the moment (contacts migration) – newbie mistake. It’s relevant to note that Google Play does not have a specific field for keywords. After publishing we expected that it would take a little while for indexes and search results to show our app, so we stayed patient – roughly a week. After a week and after reading a good existing theory about Google Play’s search algorithm as well as several for the Apple App Store, we adjusted our description to reflect the search queries we thought would be relevant to for users to find Migration. We also adjusted our title slightly and for Apple we adjusted our keywords. Here are a few sample search terms we were targeting:
- move contacts
- migrate contacts
- contact migration
Less than 24 hours after changing the description, keywords, and title we saw Migration+ show up in the top 25 results for many of our search terms in the Apple App Store. However, in Google Play we were only showing up in the top 25 for one search term, “contact migration”. Since then we’ve been tracking search term rankings for Migration+ thinking that more downloads/installs/time in the respective app repositories would increasingly benefit the ranking. That assumption seems to be true on Apple, but not currently true on Google Play. Although we’ve had ~250 downloads over the first few weeks of launch on each OS, our Google Play ranking has not improved in any significant way. Because of the lackluster ranking on Google and the fairly good ranking on Apple we’ve been trying to figure out what’s going on. We’ve noticed two big problems…
Problem 1 – Irrelevant Search Results on Google Play. Take the search term ”move contacts” for example, where we are ranked #4 of the Apple App Store and #316 on Google Play. In the search results on Google Play we’re ranked behind apps like:
- Green wold [Go Contact The
- ES File Explorer
- Luma Live Wallpaper
- Antivirus Free
- DrunkBlocker
- Locavore
- Menards®
- PicFolio for Picasa HD
- Gift Shopper Pro
- Shead Spreet Pro
- RadiantWalls HD – PlanetScapes
- ToDo List Task Manager -Lite
- MoneyWise Pro
…and about 200 other apps that are fairly irrelevant to the search term used. Essentially this seems like a case of “downloads are most important, not content”. If an app that has been downloaded many times and has either of the search terms in it’s title or description, it comes before less downloaded apps with more relevant or exact match search terms in the title or description. Here are a couple detailed examples of how irrelevant the results can be:
- If you go to Google Play from your web browser and search for “migrate contacts” on the first page of the results, you’ll find Pocket Agent® by State Farm Insurance. If you look at the description for the app it has nothing to do with contacts, it’s for insurance claims! The app description has no mention of the word “migrate” and there is only one sentence that says “contacts” and it states “Read contacts data – Used by On The Move™ as an optional privacy measure to determine if an incoming text message is from someone in your contact book.” However, this app has been downloaded between 100,000-500,000 times in the last 30 days.
- Currently, our best search term for Google Play is “contact migration” where we rank 12th. If you search Google Play for that search term, the 8th result on the page is Mighty Grocery Shopping List. It’s a nice looking app that has absolutely nothing to do with the Google Play search terms. The description does have the word “migration” in the description but it’s used to describe upgrading from the lite version of their app to the full version. The description also has the word “contact” used in a sentence where they leave their email address so you can contact them. This app has been downloaded between 10,000-50,000 in the past 30 days. Almost all other results on the first page do not even have the word “migration” anywhere in the title or description! However, almost all of them do have a significant amount of downloads in the last 30 days.
Problem 2 – Number of Results on Google Play. This second problem is intertwined with the first problem. If you search the App Store for any of our noted search terms, most of them are low to medium competition (less than 50 results). In fact, only 3 of them are over 50. All of our search terms and essentially every search on Google Play results in what would be considered a “highly competitive” search term (hundreds of results). To get specific, all of our search terms yield at least 250 results on Google Play and most yield 500!
I emailed a few people at Google with polite messages about my concerns in hopes of getting information about their direction on search for Google Play or perhaps a brief explanation of how best developers can work with their search results. Unfortunately, I haven’t got any responses. Before anyone flames, let me freely admit that I am not a professional when it comes to SEO. I should also state plainly that I am typically a happy Google product and service user. I hope this post draws some attention from the right people at Google about how challenging this has become – especially for small developers.
NOTE – there was one other problem we were going to list, lack of exact name match. However, for Migration+ at least, this has seemingly been fixed recently.
Related Articles:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2768376
http://androinica.com/2011/07/android-market-search-problems/
Why Being Reachable Matters as a App Developer
April 6, 2012 – 8:06 pm
As part of our ramp up to launch Migration+ on iPhone and Android Leo and I decided to put a feature into the app called “Ask a Question” which allows users to email us directly from the app if they have any questions or issues. Luckily, a few users have emailed us recently about an iOS issue that caused Migration+ to crash when users try to use the Export contacts feature.
One user in particular, Danny, was incredibly helpful. Danny explained to us that the app was crashing on his iPhone 3GS when he tired to use the Export Contacts feature. He was also able to provide us crash logs and other details of his setup (iOS verison, additional apps installed, etc.). Danny even got on the phone with us to try a few things! From his crash logs and some additional tests in Danny’s phone, HE was actually able to determine that contacts that had addresses linked from a Google Maps location were the cause of the crash.
Because of the ability for users to directly ask us questions and because of amazing users like Danny, we were able to get this issue identified and fixed quickly (fixed version submitted to Apple for review tonight – April 6, 2012). Had this ability not been available in our app, we likely would’ve got a lot of bad reviews and wouldn’t have known about the issue.
For anyone who wants to put in a similar feature, we encourage you to get The Business of iPhone and iPad App Development which has a great example. There are a few examples if you Google it too, but I didn’t find any as thorough as provided in the noted book.
EXPORT CRASH WORKAROUND: If you have this issue, you can use this immediate work around – simply delete the addresses for those contacts if you dont need them, or copy/paste the information into a new address entry for the same contact. As noted above, an update will be available in the App Store for iPhone as soon as Apple approves it (~7 days).
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