IssueTracker

Same issue here (HTC Droid Eris), doesn't seem to matter if I've used the picture
from Gmail contacts, Facebook profile or add it using the Android's option for
selecting a picture from the SD card.  The picture begins as a fairly decent
resolution picture, and if I make calls after changing it, it appears sharp and how I
intended.  However, upon sleeping the phone, the contact picture is then reduced to a
terrible, pixilated, low-res photo that is just unbearable on the nice screens of the
Android phones.

I'm having the same issues with my phone (HTC Droid Eris). Contact icons are really
blurry. I tried alot of different things to try and fix it and through this I
figured out that right after I set a contact icon for someone, if I call them it
will look fine. If I were to call the same person five minutes later it looks blurry
again.

Contact picture coming from Gmail appeared at low resolution, pixelated, and blurry
too on HTC HERO Android 1.5.
Please increase resolution and size of the contact picture.

Also the case on the Moto Droid (Android 2.0).  

Though not quite a fix, but a workaround... If I knew the exact pixel dimensions of the
contact picture, I could resize it properly in Photoshop and then it should show pixel
for pixel on the screen.  

Another Workaround...

Go to Gmail.com -> Settings -> General -> Contacts Pictures -> Only show pictures
that I have chosen for my contacts

This means that photos from you phone will sync to Gmail but that Gmail will stop
replacing the hi-res photos on your phone with the pixelated ones which it uses by
default, i.e. it will only sync one way.

The downside of this is that in Gmail and if you use Google Talk, you will only see
the pictures you have assigned your contacts, not the ones they have assigned
themselves.

About the two workarounds posted: I think the gmail fix might help some people but
in my case the images that are being pixelated are hi res pictures on my SD card.

And changing the pixel size of the image is something I actually tried at first. I
didn't know the pixel size so I just started playing with it. But now I am under the
impression (not possitive tho) that the phone takes whatever image/portion of an
image that you choose to use as a contact icon and saves it as the tiny tiny
thumbnail you see when just looking at you contact list ( its approx a 1/4 inch
square). The phone then upscales that tiny thumbnail when you call/receive a call.

[Comment deleted]

[Comment deleted]

Hi Mark - sounds like a good idea, but sadly once you snyc your contact with gmail it
grabs the image from your phone and degrades it, then the phone uses this newly
degraded image by default. This is soo irritating, why can't you select resolution of
the image??

Yes in fact, I should post a clarification, that the new images (hi-res) seemed to
stick for the first sync, and then become all pixelated after the second, so the
work-around I posted about does not work.

Hmm. This seems like a very basic usability error, which makes one wonder why it has
never so far been addressed.

@mark
Yeah, I got excited hoping that your work around fixed the problem but no luck today.

It does seem like it would be relatively easy to fix.  It's disconcerting that the
Droid is experiencing the same problem with 2.0 (as I was having the problem on the
Eris with 1.5.

I agree with mattmne, it does seem to be storing a tiny thumbnail and blowing it up.
 It's awful to look at.

[Comment deleted]

I think, the only solution is to change contact image size in gmail or to add the
possibility of changing. But what makes Google?

[Comment deleted]

Same as Issue 36910930, Issue 36909256, and Issue 36909341

Same issue here.  Hope this will be resolved soon

Another workaround I've found (although not ideal) is to turn off the auto-sync.

To change go into: Settings > Data Synchronization > Google > and uncheck "auto-sync".

Then go back into your photos on your SD card and reset them as contact icons.

Hello - here is an official reply I've received directly from HTC Service Centre:

Thank you for your feedback and information. I've seen this mentioned on a couple of
Hero devices and I've forwarded information regarding this to our programmers for
them to investigate further. Currently, I could only suggest you hard reset your
device to see if this helps, this is done via settings - security - factory data
reset.

Other then that I'd like to mention that the Hero will be able to upgrade to Android
Eclair when this is released which will contain several improvements over Cupcake
which you are currently using. I'd suggest you keep checking htc.com as you'll be
able to download this from there when it becomes available.

Best regards,

Dennis M
HTC

is she seriously from HTC and technical?  this has been an issue with google on
every devices that sync via gmail.  google is the source of the problem.  not
iphone, droid, wm, webos etc.  i am not sure why google is taking so long to apply
the fix.  this is just lame.  best workaround.  don't sync via google till they post
an anoucement that they have resolved this issue.  u can google and read on other
frustrated users' posting by searching the keyword.  google downscaled contact
photo.  LOL  http://www.google.com/search?
hl=en&source=hp&q=google+contact+downscaled&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=

This has been going on for over a year from google with no mention of adressing the
problem of crappy contact sync to all smartphones. It's not like they dont have
hundreds of millions of dollars in cash or the bandwith to at least bump up the rez
to 320x240 or even 800x400 so we can enjoy the full features of our smartphones. Only
solution is not to use google contacts or pretty much anything besides gmail imap and
search, since google seems to half ass all of their products hence the Beta tag on
everything. They have a thousand neat products but none work completely right.

just wanted to add this is still a problem on my nexus 1 with 2.1

Seems Google is going the apple way.....not letting us do simple things which are
available on old nokia phones....does any google employe read this.Please take
note.small pics seem so stupid on such large screens....

Same issue here on the HTC Desire with Android 2.1. On my previous Windows Mobile
phone I had nice high res contact pics. Now they are low-res and really blurry. It's
a shame for a phone with a high-res 800x480 screen. I hope that Google takes action
because of our remarks. I'll follow this issue to see how this develops.

Crazy, I have the same on my brand new 2.1 HTC Desire 800x480 screen, little 10x10
1992 style pixelated photos! Please fix this! I will lose the highres photo as soon
as you sync twice! The workaround 'Gmail.com -> Settings -> General -> Contacts
Pictures -> Only show pictures that I have chosen for my contacts' does not seem to
work for me!

This has to be fixed. I get it too on my Desire. Everything looks lovely and hires and
then this low res scaled pic comes up and it's horrible! Should be an easy thing for
them to fix??? Why they haven't fixed it yet god knows. Surely they must know about it?
????

Same here with a Desire. Whatever the cause, it's just plain embarrassing! The fact
that it's been an issue for over a year is a bit of a worry, as my brand new, just-
released phone attests to the fact that no attempt has been made to fix a known,
annoying problem...

Same with my HTC Desire. I have tried to switch from Exchange contacts to Google
Account contacts, but this blury and pixelate pictures made me switch back to
Exchange Contacts, where this problem is not.

[Comment deleted]

[Comment deleted]

I also have a desire and the low-res contact photos (that get Sync'd from Outlook)
suck. Cmon google, fix this!!

[Comment deleted]

Alright! We all know it's an issue! Now kindly stfu unless you have some useful
information to contribute.

Ok, to all those nubs that don't get this. This is not an android problem. This is
problem in damn Google Contacts service. It stores resized photos with small
resolution, good for google talk and stuff but not for android phone screens. So, you
should complain there, not here. Sure, android team needs to make Google Conacts team
to fix this because this is bad thing, but it's not android problem.

I'd encourage people affected by this issue to just star it, using the star icon by
the bug title - and not add comments unless they contain new information that will
actually help the developers fix the issue. Starring the issue is the recommended way
of showing that it matters to you - adding a 'me too!' comment is distracting and
causes people to get annoyed by bulk e-mail notifications when all they want to know
is when the bug is fixed.

To those people annoyed by the e-mail traffic, I'd recommend you set a filter to just
archive the notifications: you can do this quite easily in Gmail by clicking 'More
actions', 'Filter messages like these', and setting these fields:

from: codesite-noreply@google.com
subject: Issue 36909633

Workaround:

You must create additional contact IN PHONE MEMORY, add a high quality photo and then
link your Google/Facebook contact with that new phone contact (so you have only one
contact visible on your phone but there are in fact two or three).

Then you choose a photo for this contact by selecting "Phone".

And voila... you have nice, high quality photo for your contact :)
Good luck!

It works but then you will not see pictures in GMail and...WHY THE HELL I NEED TO
DUPLICATE MY CONTACTS

Dear Google team, please fix it!

I also have a Desire and the contact photos are a kind of bad joke.
Please, fix this issue.

Another with the Desire and the bug.

It would be so awesome that everyone with desire and the bug now report here... NOT!

I have the same problem on my HTC Legend. The pictures are really aweful

Same issue on HTC Desire

Reeeallllyy? You have the same issue? The same issue that everyone has?

Pah. Unstarred.

It's a real coolness breaker to see horribly destroided foto's on your contacts widget! HTC Desire here

(the keyboard is kind of fiddely too)

Google has fixed the issue:

Fix - "Sync to Exchange...."

Bwaaap!! HAHA!

Same issue N1

Having the same issue on my Legend. Please fix it!

-.-'

Really #46 & #47?...........

Use the star if you have the problem and COMENT ONLY TO EXPLAIN BETTER OR APORT NEW
INFORMATION........... but don't comment to say "same problem"........... because it is notified to every body by e-
mail, and it is really annoying... -.-'

Re #45 - Also seeing this on Exchange Contacts.

Same issue Desire.

Oh my god! It doesn't fixed till 7 months?

Not only is this issue not fixed, but this other thread just got closed and google
claims it is working as intended:

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5046

Appalling.

It's terrible problem.. we need HQ Contact photos and google give Weird One :(

At lease user should have possibility to disable photo synchronization. So if phone
has setup its own photo, then do not download photos from Gmail.

wow sucha disappointment from google.  doesn’t this effect the droid's sales?  someone should help put the word out to all other forums.  I still can't believe this have not been fixed.  

I have the same problem, but I realized that, when I use my contacts pictures from Facebook, they don´t come pixalated. With pictures from Facebook it works fine.

Google needs to fix this otherwise the high resolution screens on our phones are going to waste...

This is a complete failure on a device such as the EVO!
Facebook icons look great- please fix this problem!

 

I have found a workaround for this problem on my Evo. Basically I create a phone contact that is just a name and a picture. Since the contact is stored on the SIM card it doesn't sync the image to google. I then use HTC's "Link" feature to link the google contact and the phone contact. It was kind of a pain to do, but it works, hopefully google fixes this problem soon.

Nice idea, do you think this is any different than creating a contact on the "phone" directory and then linking to google, rather than creating on the sim ? Or maybe the advantage of having them on the sim is that you can hide them ? By the way, I really wouldn't count on google to fix these minor issues anytime soon, they don't seem to care as they have bigger issues, besides it's been know for a very long time.

A Google Employee responded to a thread about this topic elsewhere on the internet:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android/thread?tid=6a62bb7424f4784a&hl=en

"Howdy partners,

I agree that crisper contact images would be a very nice addition to the call experience. The team working to improve the Android Contacts app is aware of this request and will work to fix it in the future. Thanks for the feedback, I'll see you around the forum.

Cordially,
Ry Guy"

Hopefully this means that it will be fixed soon.  It's really disappointing to have such a great display on my new HTC EVO and then see such *ugly* pictures whenever someone calls!  

On my HTC Incredible, if you go to People --> select contact --> menu --> link --> menu --> select contact photo

a prompt comes up, and you can select Google, Phone, Camera, Photo or Facebook. And for the first few moments afterwards, whatever you select works.

Then either Facebook bullies out the choice, or if there is no Facebook link, Google will nonetheless sync and blurry the photo again. Not sure why they can't just program into Android "override google's choice." It should do the same for Facebook, though I think that's an HTC problem and not an android one.

There is a work around for this problem. If you want a high res picture for your contact it will only remain high res if you only store the contact on your phone. If you sync it back and forth to google, facebook or exchange it will sync back at a lower res.

To get around this, create a duplicate "phone contact" and leave all their info blank but make their name match your synced contact info. Add your high res photo to your newly created phone contact. You'll then have two versions of the same contact, one stored on the phone and one that is synced externally. When viewing contacts choose the newly created "phone contact" and link it to your synced contact. You'll now have one contact show up with all their info and the high res photo.

When linking contacts make sure you select the contact with the photo you want and link all others to it. It won't work if you select a synced contact and link the phone contact to it.  

/irony on
Yeah, really nice solution. Duplicate contacts... good job.
/irony off

Bhamzey: Just FYI - There is no problem with sync on exchange. Only gmail reduce size and quality of contact picture upon sync to it. Exchange keeps the exact image I upload via phone.

Beautiful phones with a big beautiful screens should not display crappy pictures. Having gmail significantly degrade the contact's image quality is disappointing. Perhaps gmail would not reduce the size or compress the image so much. Or perhaps Android could always pull the image from it's original source. Or perhaps Android could store the images on the phone is their original quality.

Perhaps google could care something about this stuff but apparently they really don't. I've just found a similar issue, of the same type : using stock 3D gallery choose a contact picture using a big high resolution image. Crop the biggest size available and the gallery will resize that portion very badly, try calling that contact shows it...

same issue here with samsung spica..:-(

same issue here with Xperia X10! I mean, I have one of the biggest Android screen and cannot see my contacts pics with a not-crappy resolution??

- Steps to reproduce the problem
Add a photo for any "Google contact" on your phone, crop the photo as necesssary.  Sync the phone so the Google contacts get updated on the phone and online

- Sample source code demonstrating the problem
The phot will become blurry and blocky as it was resized to 96x96 to suit Google Contacts (online and in Gmail) and then synced back to the phone.

- What you think the correct behavior should be.
The photo in Google Contacts (online and Gmail) should be allowed to be bigger/higher resolution something of the order of 300 x 300 so that it can be displayed in high quality on the phone.

Please fix, this affects all Android phones (all versions) that use Google contacts that are sync'ed to the online version.  It can only be the lack of a central place to complain that there aren't millions more complaints.

Work arounds of not sync'ing or adding a phone contact with a picture are just as lame as Google for not having fixed this already.

Has any one added the photo by logging in to thier gmail from a computer and updating the higher res contact photo there. When this photo syncs down to the phone it looks fine on my moto droid running stock 2.1.

Note: That if your contact has a facebook profile etc with a photo as well you will have to edit the contact after it syncs and tell it to use the picture that is from gmail not facebook. Hope this helps

In 2.1, the small contact photos beside the names were crisp and clear when scrolling through my address book. When enlarged during a call, they became blurry like everyone else above me has mentioned. Now, in 2.2, even the small ones are pixelated and blurry. The worst part is, if I edit one of those contacts, when I get to the editing portion that small contact image becomes crisp and clear again. How can this be? How can there be such a discrepancy of resolutions between functions?

Google, you need to get your act together on this issue already. It would take all of a half-day to encode this into an update. We're coming up on two years of ignorance and we shouldn't have to wait for Gingerbread.

[Comment deleted]

Great, as a new smartphone owner i thought i go the google way because this is build to work together. But it's prety frustrating to see this going on for around 9 month?! Same with the adress fields in google contacts, they are not able to add 3 fields to fill in street, town etc. This is a big disapointment, why do i need a snyc feature if i can't use it? This is 2010, i can stream TV to my phone but i can
't get my contacts in order?

I think the biggest screw up is that you can't even get an answer on why
stuff like this isn't fixed aster a year. By the way, it doesn't show as
much on stock android

this

Yeah I hate "me too"'s (and in this case "yeah it happens for my phone too!") as much as anyone, but I really can't see why this isn't a one-line fix. Maybe they need to add thumb-nailing code to various google products, but still... it's not rocket surgery.

Might it not be possible to implement a work-around in Android itself, whereby synced contacts get the low-res version from Google Contacts as a backup portrait, but use the one stored on the phone instead? In my opinion, sync only makes sense when the devices operating on both ends (in my case, HTC Desire and Google Contacts) share the same feature set. If any one device is able to provide more functionality, it should use that functionality instead of limiting itself to the device at the other end.

This is a fundamental part of syncing protocols, and not just for contact images. I think this should be promoted as a general sync usability issue, since Android should not be crippling itself just because the service it is syncing to doesn't support the same image size.

I have a HTC Desire and I'd like to see this issue solved soon.

I too suffer from this problem. Or did rather till I moved all my contacts to the phone memory (Yeah I'll manually sync 'em thanks). However I first pointed the blame somewhere else at first.

Those of you in the UK will be aware that all the networks use ByteMobile data compression on their mobile data connections and that (On a mobile phone at least) it's rather non-trivial to switch it off (Or at least reduce it to it's lowest setting which is actually the best you can do). If you where not aware, it's the reason your images look pixellated and poor quality when browsing the web using your mobile data connection. T-Mobile and Vodafone's default compression seem to be the most aggressive while I would suggest the o2 default is pretty tame.

Now assuming that Google get around to fixing the problem and increasing the resolution and compression issue in their software, due to the ByteMobile compression, it is possible that UK users MAY continue to get pixellated images as the image compression is added on the fly by the network. It all depends on how the image is synced between Google and your phone (I've not been keen enough to examine it using packet inspection).

Something to consider thinking about for if/when the Google issue is solved.

@keith.harbridge
The data compression has nothing to do with this problem, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because the rest of us outside of the UK are having the same issue. The contact pictures are synced with your Google account and that makes them small in resolution, because Gmail down converts the pictures and when they get re-synced it's a mess. So the pictures end up on your phone again in a small resolution form after syncing, meaning when someone calls you'll see an image stored on your phone not on the web, therefore you need not worry about data compression, just pray that Google finally fixes this ugly issue...

It has nothing to do with data compression. The networks may compress data but they do not throw data away. The images on my websites are exactly the same images as on any other browser. On my phone images are just fine.

The contact images are pixelated because Google Contacts only stores images as 96x96 regardless of the original photo supplied. End of story.

To solve the problem Google needs to either :

1 - allow higher resolution images to be stored on Google Contacts

2 - allow contact images added on the phone to be excluded from the sync.

Neither of these changes is rocket science but Google seem to be blind to the issue or don't care. Stupid really because it devalues their operating system and weakens the appeal of Android handsets.

HTC Desire. I can't believe, that "issue" still not fixed. Its terrible.

This is not an Android issue, but a Google contacts one. Google needs to increase the dimensions of contact icons on http://www.google.com/contacts

@kustodian Sure, but if it's possible to use or make a work-around in Android to get around the limitations of a third-party service (yes, even though they are both Google, in this instance your phone is syncing with a third party) then I would call that a good thing, and worth pursuing.

This problem was first reported (at least in this thread) nearly a year ago, and Google has shown no interest in modifying their contacts service to meet user desires. Is there a similar forum or bug tracker for Google Contacts to which we can attach this thread? If not, then it is as good a place as any to discuss work-arounds, both technological as well as rallying campaigns to convince Google to make the necessary changes.

I can see this is not really an Android issue, but can I can +1 an appeal to the Android coders to help create a workaround of only sync'ing a contacts photo from Google Contacts (or Mail) if there is not one already assigned via the mobile phone.  This would leave the higher resolution photo from the phone intact, but allow a lower resolution image to be stored in Contacts.

In fact it's simple. When you sync from the higher resolution phone to the
Gmail account, take the photo and rescale it. When you do the opposite,
leave the photo alone. Or just don't sync photos. Or just fix it completely.


What I'm hoping now is that maybe some AOSP or custom rom can implement this
kind of workaround. Anybody knows if it's possible ?

I've given up hoping that google will fix this.

Yeah this would not be hard to do, a few simple sync rules would do the trick if a quick fix is needed. The problem here is that Google doesn't seem to care to deal with the issue or it's very low priority...

This low resolution pic thing is making my $400 vibrant look like a cheap toy... not to mention I can't really see who is calling from the little pic shown... PLEASE FIX THIS!

@Omegavader ... you solution works, you just need to switch off the "Auto Sync" option from Menu=>Settings=>accounts and sync=>Uncheck Auto Sync ...
 
Now perform the steps you mentioned ...

"On my HTC Incredible, if you go to People --> select contact --> menu --> link --> menu --> select contact photo" and select the photo from your phone album

The photos remain in High resolution .....

Cheers and Enjoy Guys ....

@Omegavader

Yeah... but the problem is that we can't sync with google contacts!! You can only have either high resolution photos or contacts sync in the cloud. And that really sucks.

And if, as in my case, you have almost everyone of your contacts with pictures in GContacts... @&%$*!! do it again in the phone...

EXACTLY. Why in the heck would we want to make our phone contacts independent of our Google contacts?!  The ability to sync contacts is one of the best things about a smart phone.  Plus, it's REALLY fun going through all your contacts one by one again on your mobile phone and changing the pictures on them, which requires a decent number of clicks.  The fact that this is still an issue (not to mention the Nexus One debacle) shows that mobile phones are still a low priority side project for Google.  For this and a couple other reason, I'm sadly thinking about abandoning my Android phone and moving all my calls to my work cell phone, an iPhone 3GS.

I have a HTC Desire and I'd like to see this issue solved soon.

Or else what? :-)

Or else he'll take his phone back and get an iPhone! Dun dun daaarrr,,,

Google will be heartbroken.

@goran.genter and @tdhutt, I don't see the point of your sarcastic remarks, when we have already identified this to be a real, existing issue.

First off, Android market share /is/ a concern of Google, and if an issue as trivial as this one seems to be was actually driving people away from Android, that would be a pretty silly and pretty bad reason to lose potential clients.

Second, and this is completely independent of my first point, who even cares about market share? Software projects, in particular open-source ones, should always strive to be the best they possibly can. Artificial software limitations are rediculous, and if there is a way forward that increases the performance, usability, or enjoyment of a software/device, then it should be taken.

Besides, artificial software limitations are the reason many of us steered clear of the iPhone in the first place.

There are many reasons to turn away clients/customers, such as ideological differences, or legal implications, but something as silly as the resolution of your contact photos should never even be /considered/. This is something Android users want, why is it so hard to see that?

To me it looks like the user-experience, and fixing the many important issues like this, is lower priority in google/android. What they care most is to impress the media with new cool functionalities that other phones can't do, while forgetting the most basic stuff (picture synchronization, call recording, playing voicemail wav files, gmail client glitches, custom outlook calendar synching, etc).
They got in a battle with apple, which they are winning, but forgot the end-user in the process. The fact that you don't get answers to this - and lots of other important problems - is an indication of that.

Regarding the provocatory 'or else ?'... before seeing these issues, I never considered buying a win phone 7, even if it looks excellent. This has changed now.
People reading this page are sure to not give a %$%$%, if me or someone else says so, (since I'm sure google/android employees never bother reading this stuff) but it's at least a place to discuss these problems and vent frustration. If the issue was minor, or was reported for a short time, that would be different.

I agree with you mate, but this topic is here for so long that only thing left to us are sarcastic remarks. Because it seems noone will fix it, or has replied to us. And it's funny to see all the people saying "not working on my phone too" or "better fix this soon".

It's funny in a semi-tragic way, I agree, hehe. Anyway, I was actually realizing that, while the bug in image size conversion exists, and shouldn't take very long to fix by the part of google... there is another issue at play:

If i put a new contact on my phone, take a photo, add numbers, emails, etc, than save, the phone sends the changes to the Gmail Server. If I never open and modify such contact in my Gmail account on the browser, why should it sync back the Server version to my phone, right away, and ruin the picture on the phone ? Isn't this another glitch ? Or the photo getting resized is enough to change the timestamp ?

Either way, if they don't care to increase picture quality in gmail, they could simply avoid back-synching the pictures to the phone. How long could it take to do it ? Half a day ? Even a week ?

Let's ask as many people as we can to mark this issue with a star

30.08.2010 17:11 пользователь <android@googlecode.com> написал:

working

I think they do care about the user experience. But the problem is that it's difficult to patch each android version for every little thing they have to improve. I think all this user experience issues are going to be solve in android 3.0 (google is focusing in user exerperience for android 3.0). So wait and see.

It's in the top 10 "Defect" issues on code.google, it's been here for a year, there are already 350 people starring it, and it's still in the 'new' status, without anyone from google answering... I say they will never fix it regardless, but hell yeah, let's have people star the issue.

For now I had to buy a software that backups contacts. With sync disabled, I perform the backup, turn on sync, turn off sync, restore the backup. A pain to do, but the only workaround, I think.

Then they could just have posted a 'This is gonna be fixed in 3.0' and over this thread. But still no official answer

Wait and see, you say... I understand your philosophy, but this was reported when 1.5 was out. We are 4 Minor (1 Major) version later, and they won't even answer you. Even if they fix it in 3.0, which we will be lucky to see it in 2010 and, most importantly _won't come to every phone_... it's already too late.

In all honesty, its irritating, but when you have phones this awesome, you can live with it! And maybe one day this will be fixed, but until then; The Android team,  will have their work cut out competing with Windows 7 mobile and iOS. Realistically, this issue is quite small and is more an issue with gmail. Not allowing medium/large contact pictures. For Android to just not sync the pictures would be a bodge job.

The lack of response is not good though.

Uh, do you think that since the Original Poster only mentioned the symptoms, and not the cause (contact syncing), they didn't actually realize the real issue ?

Regarding the above comment, I agree it's not the end of the world, but if you have a modern HTC handset or similar that displays contacts in a bigger frame (HTC Desire here), the phone looks a lot less 'awesome', and actually feels like a cheap toy when they are calling you. It's like going back to my Sony Ericsson W810, which I'm actually not totally sure if had worse contact photo quality.
Not to mention the fact that you could have taken a very funny or unique photo of your contact when you added it to your phone, only to find it completely pixelated and worthless afterwards.

Anyway, I was playing with backups and ended up, for a moment, with the contacts synchronized, but good picture quality. I was almost going to believe the coincidence, that they fixed the issue, when the next sync brought back the pixelation on the phone.

On the other hand, I was wondering why people on XDA building AOSP roms didn't manage to modify/fix the issue. Is it probably inside the proprietary Google Apps, which aren't released as source ?

I am working around this issue for now by having installed an app called Fullscreen Caller ID (which unfortunately isn't free unless you only have three contacts) and manually setting high-res contact photos for 85 of my contacts.  That was a few hours of work unfortunately, and I don't see a way to back it up (no word from the developer yet) so I will likely have to do some of that work over again every time I change the ROM on my phone.  But at least it's something.  :P

But doesn't that Fullscreen Called ID photo, revert automatically to low res, 96x96 pictures ? Can you elaborate how that works ? Thanks

Also, as mentioned above, the semi-proof that they don't care is that they closed http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5046 issue 36910930, which states the same thing as "Working as Expected". As said above, appalling.

I'm experiencing the same problem on HTC Desire with Android 2.2

It would be nice to have a larger contact picture in google contacts. Especially since Picasa 3.8 made it a lot easier to push photos from Picasa to your Google Contacts. It doesn't make much sense to do so if those pictures appear pixelated on your phone.

Please fix this. Pictures look horrible like that!

 I don't understand. They added many features recently. relifted the contacts. Added priority mail.
I'm sure they don't have storage problem, so that can't be it :)
We should be able to store the pictures in their original size, maybe in a picasa dedicated folder. Then have the possibility to create a thumbnail that will be used for sync with mobile phones. The thumbnail size can be determined by the mobile phone model. (synching 4 meg pics migh cause performance issues...)
Come on google we want to be amazed. Now that you have the whitepaper how much time do you need to add this feature ?

I have the same problem.

Please, Fix it.

[Comment deleted]

Just got the HTC Evo and this thing with the contact pictures  being blurry is so frustrating.  I certainly hope this gets fixed at some point, but seeing how long this has been going on I have my doubts.

This occurs with Facebook contact photo's when receiving calls also, therefore it is not solely linked to Google contacts, is it?

Android has some picture re sizing feature for faster load times and less load on mobile internet. That is why pictures in a browser look crap and I suppose that is why synced photos look crap. Or maybe Google uses some kind of server through which all the data goes and that server compresses all the images synced or downloaded. Anyways, I would have thought that with froyo this nonsense would be fixed. We can always wait for 3.0 :D

Please address this issue, no reason that contact photos on a cheap phone should look better than on an EVO running state-of-the-art Android 2.2! Simple solution seems to be to allow local storage of contact photos in original high resolution.

Hope this gets sorted soon.

Why is it reduced so?

I am sure there is enough room on these devices to allow a little more detail in the contact pictures.

@Marlenem...@gmail.com

Even the Facebook profile pics are processed through Google, which reduces the quality to a 96x96 thumbnail and then blows it up in a blurry mess on the screen. IMO the resolution that Google compresses the image to should match the resolution of the device you're syncing with.

HTC Hero, Android 2.1

I have the same problem.

Work around solution:  See thread below

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google%20Mobile/thread?tid=4fe466bb19e3f875&hl=en

This has to be fixed

A workaround should not be needed, Google could fix simply by allowing storage of a large contact image or by allowing my phone to keep it's image instead of the Google contacts one.

The solution posted October 21 works. Just change your Contacts' photos option from Show All to the second option (Only show pictures I have chosen for my contacts) and you will retain your hi res photos.

Do it, please!

Search: android low res photo contact
About 258.000  results

Guess Google should fix it.

Fix it ! )

yes please.

oh, common Google, WTF?

At the very least, clicking on the person's contact photo should bring up a larger picture, at least the size of the screen - this way you can show clients or friends pictures of your contacts on the fly, especially if you're referring a person to someone else for further assistance.

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please fix it!!!!

please fix it!!!!

Please please PLEASE make the contact photo a higher res! Being able to set it up to like 800x400 or even higher would be awesome. Also having it displayed bigger (and configurable) when a person calls would be fantastic too.

Same on Hero

same on Froyo

Fix it ! )

Contact Photos on my Desire HD are terrible, please fix the resolution in Google, make it higher to get better photos to my contacts ... PLEASE!

yup getting similar issues here... hurry up and provide a proper fix not these work arounds that are being posted everywhere.

This should be merged with issue 36905960.

This is a minor but nevertheless very frustrating issue (it reminds you of being there everytime you make / get a call).

just give us nice big crisp images of our contacts

Very irritating when seeing upscaled image on large screen.

Oh man, this should be embarassing dragging it so long.

OMFG I can't believe this is not fixed yet!!!!! GOOOOOOOOOOOOGLEEEEEE !!!!!

If you want to do something about it, please go to the link above, and vote for the suggestion!.
 
http://goo.gl/mod/6ZHo

This should be merged with 1265!

Allowing free gigabytes for your Gmail account and services and forcing contact images downsampled with horrific compression level as a final touch.. Ain't that a really bad, bad joke, Google?

While God is in the detail, you guys are in denial. You will never see such an obvious fail from Apple, and that's why Android UI sucks balls in many places.. I really would like Matias Duarte to do a great job towards cleaning this whole mess. Yeah, I've switched from Apple to Google in terms of mobile phone, but you gotta name things, you know.

This is a well deserved rant, because you got no lives as this is something people see each darn call. Two years of ignorance and counting.. You guys know how to freak a man.

Same problem on the MyTouch 4G running Android 2.2.

One fix is to choose "T-Mobile" instead of "Google" under "Select contact photo". This should appear after you've assigned a photo to the contact IF you have contacts for the same person saved under your Google account and your T-Mobile account, and have linked them on your phone. I don't have T-Mobile entries for all my contacts, but if I could figure out how to back up all my Google contacts to T-Mobile, that would solve my problem.

I was sure this was a problem HTC Sense. I can't believe the #1 Smartphone OS can't even do contact photos.

Okay, here's a work-around for T-Mobile customers, at least with the Mytouch 4G and Android 2.2:

1. Add the customer as a Fave. This will create a "T-Mobile Contact" which should automatically link to your Google contact if you added the fave from your contacts rather than adding them as a new contact.
2. Assign a photo to the contact. If you already had a photo assigned, you will have to do it again for the T-Mobile contact. If you didn't, then make sure to choose "T-Mobile Contact" from the "assign photo" menu AFTER assigning the photo, otherwise it will default to the low-resolution Google contact photo.

3. (Optional) Once the photo is assigned, you can delete the contact from your faves (be careful not to delete the contact from your phone when asked). You can even delete the photo from your phone!

I'm not sure if the high-res photo will follow you to a new phone, but it should work at least as long as you keep the same phone.

for myself I found a solution. what I have done: export to sd card all contacts . delete all contacts from gmail, delete all contacts from my phone. import contacts from sdcard to PHONE and this is it!
You can also backup contacts from gmail.
I made many many synchronisations with gmail and now everything is fine for me. no blurry icon anymore :D

Wow Google? Why don't you fix this? Or give us the option to "Use Hi-Res Photo"

HTC Desire : This works for me.

1. Add a new Phone-Contact, just give it a name.
2. Select a photo to use as Contact picure.
3. Link the new Phone-Contact to your Google-Contact. (now the phone will display just one contact)
4. Edit the Contact, click on the photo and select "Use Phone Photo"

Now you can sync all you want and the phone will always display the Phone-Contact picture.

How this god.dam... pb could still exist ? Do we really need to wait for gingerbread to see this pb fixed ?

Is it really so hard or what ?

Here 's an idea, how about changing 96x96 by 800x800 ? Voila ! Fixed...

Pretty ridiculous flaw for Android.  I tried the fix in the other thread and it didn't work (makig mail only show your contact photos).

This needs to be fixed.  The linked contacts option from Sense works well, but it's of no help to anyone with an original Droid, Nexus 1, Nexus S, or any other stock Android phone or ROM (like Cyanogen).  I really love Android, but Google's lack of support for things that can be fixed very easily on their end is very discouraging.

Issue open from Oct 2009. Cant believe this issue is not yet fixed

Agree with everyone else! Come on google!!!! A multi-billion dollar company can't make a quick fix for this?!

this must be fixed, this won't be so hard to change, will it?

What about all those "Google employes" having an Android phone!!! Don't they want a high res picture themselfs in their Android?? This is getting ridicilous!

It's almost one year and a half since this issue has been opened, you guys really don't give a rats ass about our input... can't believe you ignores us like this, after all, we all are the backbone of your multi-billion industry...

still waiting. This is absolutely ridiculous. It may be time to go back to a windows phone.

Seriously google, you suck for not addressing this yet. You should be ashamed.

Please, please fix this.  Seriously detracts from phone experience. (HTC Evo Shift).

Guys, whilst I agree with the Google side of your argument, no-one here has yet mentioned another issue which is totally outside of Google's control.

Mobile network operators apply massive compression to images passing through their networks eg, for web pages but equally for contacts. So the level of pixelation I'm seeing on contact images is far worse than the plain 96x96 pixel reduced resolution. Not only is it worse but, as images bounce back and forth between phones and Google, they can get gradually more and more corrupted.

Sadly the only solution I can see to this is to adopt the duplicate entry in the phone linked to the Google entry. Any change Google might make is unlikely to alter a root cause of image corruption unless you only sync your contacts when connected to a WLAN.

No way this has to do with bandwidth. Google stores so much data and this would be insignificant. Please fix.

yup, pleeeeeease fix it...htc desire hd froyo...

Confirmed on Desire Z with Android 2.2. 1.5 years after the problem is signaled, no fix and no fault acknowledgment. This is the price we all have to pay for Google's free software.

Apple's probably got a patent on it that Google doesn't want to bother with...

should be most important :))))
because using a google account just brings benefits, but if you have to deal with such a low resolution on incoming calls you think twice before using it. :(
please improve this!

FIX THIS FUCKING PROBLEM

Please fix this issue, it is very annoying!

I also have this issue.  It seems the phone takes the high res picture, uploads it to google at first sync, where it gets shrunk and compressed, then it gets downloaded again at a second sync, overwriting the high res version.

Hopefully with the recent change in contact file size from a max of 32kb to 128kb, we will finally see higher resolution pictures.

Problems with LG optimus 2x too. Very low quality with the contact photos.

My workaround:

Save the highres photo on the phone in the DCIM folder, where the camera stores the photos. On my phone, that's /sdcard/DCIM/

* Then open the contact
* Open linked on the top right
* On the top left there's a little down arrow beside the picture, click there and choose the camera picture you stored before (Albums - Camera). Crop like you want.

Then the contact uses the highres image on your phone, and a lowres is saved on the google server. This way I don't need a duplicate contact and also have the image on gmail ;-)

Tested on HTC Desire - Android 2.2

- Felix

I have just tested the solution of Felix, but after sync with Google the photo appears of low resolution.
HTC Desire S