With Android invading the smartphone market worldwide, more and more users are beginning to rely on their Google Contacts to keep their phone numbers in order. This can be a pretty daunting task, especially when you have multiple instances of your contacts scattered all over the place. Up until now, the only way to fix this was to manually merge all instances of the same contact into one. This process could take hours for even the most skilled Googler.
Via the Official Gmail Blog, all that hard work can now be forgotten. Now, you can merge all duplicate contacts with a single click. Present in your contacts is a "Got duplicate contacts?" section. By clicking "Find duplicates" you can easily see a list of all contacts that appear more than once. You can then click "details" by each one to see a preview of what the proposed merge would look like. On the list, you can then select which ones you do or don"t want merged. It"s pretty simple, and works very well.
Your Google Contacts can be used on many different devices, and unlike many carrier supplied backup solutions, this one"s free. Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry are all supported via Google Sync. Using Google Contacts will ensure that you never lose your years worth of amassed names and numbers. Even if you lose your phone, Google has your contacts safely stored on their servers, waiting to be synced to your replacement device.