Duplicate Contacts in your Phonebook? Here’s an Easy Fix

If you have ever had to have your phone replaced or had to do a hard reset than you are probably familiar with losing all your contacts, or worse yet – ending up with duplicate contacts.

Alright. Fine. Having duplicate contacts isn’t as bad as losing all of your contacts, but it can be annoying. With Contact Analyzer 2 it takes out the frustration of your phonebook.  All you have to do is download the app and run it.  Once run you have a few options to either merge the contacts or delete the duplicates. It runs for a few minutes and you are all fixed.

Check out “Contact Analyzer 2”


Phone Troubleshooting

Quick Download: Phone TesterSD ToolsSMS Backup & Restore

If you are having a problem with your phone there are a few apps that can help you get to the bottom of it yourself, without having to take it in for repair (or to at least help the tech at the repair place).

From touchscreen issues to the memory card not working, try these apps to help figure out what went wrong.  Plus, as an added bonus, I have included an app to backup your text messages, since Google doesn’t save those for you automatically…

For starters download Phone Tester. Phone Tester is an app that tests all of the major components of your phone.  The first app I download if I think there is a problem with the phone.  It tests:
*Device’s sensors: accelerometer, gyroscope, compass…
*Wifi: internal & external IP, gateway, DHCP server…
*GPS: latitude, longitude, speed…
*Battery: health, level of charge…
*Multitouch screen: how many fingers recognize your device?(not available in Android 1.6)
Also displays system information about hardware and software like RAM, kernel version, screen, …

 Next up is an app that is designed just to test your SD card.  Most Android devices have a memory card slot and sometimes there can be issues with reading or writing to the card.   With SD Tools you can scan your card to see all of the manufacturer info about the card (like making sure the great deal you bought on ebay or amazon wasn’t a counterfeit) plus the main feature of the app is that it tests the read and write speeds of your card. 

If you do detect a problem and decide to do a hard reset on your phone, or take it it for repair, you may want to do a backup of your text messages. If so you will want to download SMS Backup & Restore.  It will save your text messages to the memory card and then allow you to restore them back to the phone once the phone is reset.

So hopefully these apps will help you out if you are having issues with your phone.  Keep an eye out for additions as I find more great troubleshooting apps.

ZDBox (All-in-one toolbox)

If you are like me you like to make sure that your phone is running at peak performance. Android phones, like computers, are sometimes in need of maintenance (along with regular reboots).  To help with this there are a bunch of apps to help with cache memory and uninstalling apps, but ZDBox is the first app that I have found that is FREE and has this many great tools.

Here is a listing of all of the included tools (from the developer):

★ Widgets: Keep screen always on, kill all tasks, WiFi on/off, airplane mode on/off, brightness adjustment, sound settings, rotate screen on/off, bluetooth on/off, start/stop sync, switch between 2G/3G, app lock on/off, GPS on/off, APN on/off (mobile access point), flashlight on/off
★ Battery: Monitoring and showing lots of information about remaining battery time, temperature, health, time since last boot, necessary time until full charge and so on
★ Traffic counter: Monthly/daily mobile data usage overview, shows remaining data traffic, detailed data usage information for each app.
★ Do not disturb: Just set days and the time when you need your privacy and you won’t be disturbed by your phone. Set phone to silent, vibration or airplane mode.
★ App lock: Protect apps with a password or pattern, for exmaple your contacts, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and so on
★ Task killer: Kill all apps at once, define protected apps which won’t be killed, set auto kill when screen gets locked, mark single or multiple apps to kill
★ Notification bar: One tap on the bar shows remaining battery time, running apps, how much data traffic is left and if app lock is active or not. A tap on these informations starts ZDbox.
★ Uninstaller: Shows used/available internal and SD card memory. Apps can be easily uninstalled. Single or multiple (batch) uninstall possible.
★ App to SD: Move apps to your SD card. Single or multiple (batch) move possible. Only for Android 2.2 and 2.3.