As you will already be well aware, Android is built and powered by Google and has been closely designed to work extremely well with Google’s own ever-expanding list of services.  One of the very best and most useful of these services is the Contacts feature.

Long gone are the days where the only option to save your Contacts is on your phone, or sim card.

Why Use Google Contacts?

Every Android phone will give you the option to save your contacts to Google, this is linked with the Gmail (Google) account you used when you first signed into your Android phone.  I won’t go into steps to add new contacts as this will differ slightly for each device depending on what variation of the Android UI you are using (e.g. Sense or Motoblur).

Once your contacts are linked with your Google account you can access them at any time via www.google.com/contacts where you can add, edit or remove contacts and these changes will appear on your phone next time you sync (which on most phones will be automatic at set intervals unless you specified otherwise).

You will also be free to switch devices, change firmware (rom) on your phone, wipe data etc etc without having to worry about losing your contact data ever again.

How to use

Coming from non-Android:

If you are coming from a smart-phone with an app store, check to see if you have access to a google contact sync app.  If so you should be able to quickly add the contacts to Google via this app.  If not, don’t panic, you will have to do it manually but it really is worth while.

It is easier to go to the website linked above and then add your contacts manually one by one.  Once completed you can start a sync on your android phone by going to (from the home screen):

menu > settings > accounts and sync > sync now

The contacts will then load onto your phone.

Entering contacts on your Android:

Make sure that when you add a new contact you select any box that suggests that you want to link to Google.  Do not worry if you do not currently have a data connection, it will just sync the changed when you next do.

On some devices you may need to press menu > settings from your contacts application and allow Google sync from within there.

Conclusion

It may take you a little bit of time to sort this out at first, especially if coming from a non-smart-phone with lots of contacts, however once you have done it once it will be saved for life in your Google Account, free to access on any Google service you log-into and removes the need for you to worry about losing your contacts.