Tag Archives: Contacts

Contacts (People) HTC Evo

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I’ve had an HTC Evo since September 2010. One thing I struggled with understanding was why the pictures for contacts didn’t stay how I had made them.

I used to have a Palm Pre. I had Google Contacts, had worked on Google on my laptop to make my contacts how I wanted. I loaded pictures there.

On my Evo, I just had to add a few accounts to it when it was brand new and voila! All my stuff was on my phone in short order. But the thing is, PEOPLE was a bit confusing, even coming from the Palm Pre which had LAYERED Contacts.

So, with how it works, it’s great, have a bunch of contacts here and there and somewhere else, they can all be pulled into your phone and then you can put the right ones together to make a set of from 1 contacts different contact profiles.

In the HTC Evo it’s actually more clear when understood from the un-linked position of things. When no contacts are linked to any other contacts there can be multiple entries for one person. For instance, an “on your phone” contact, a “google” contact, a “flickr” contact, etc.

Each “contact” has information associated with it, including a “picture”. For Google it’s whatever is on Google for that contact. For Flickr it’s whatever is that person’s avatar on Flickr. So then … on the phone … it’s whatever picture is associated with that contact on your phone.

In order to have a nice crisp contact picture showing when you call that contact or when they call you … it’s best to have the phone contact picture. (This is how you do it for any contact, but particularly a topic of usefulness for any Google Contact user.) If you don’t have original images on your phone tied to a phone contact, then the other pictures the linked contact uses are degraded images from websites. The are pixelated and blurry, horrible monstrous things. They look nice at first, but then when your phone syncs with those services, you see a degraded picture next time, sometimes swapped from Google to Flickr or something too. Weird. Anyhow, continue on to solve it.

1. For each contact that you have a specific image you want to use for said contact, un-link everything from their linked profile. (open contact, at the top on the right touch “Linked” to get to the screen to edit those settings. Touch the green linked line to “unlink”. Then touch “done”.

2. Go to the PEOPLE list.

2. Open the “phone contact” –only have their NAME entered and for the picture pick the one you want, crop as desired, and save it, save the contact. If you don’t have a “phone contact” entry, then make a new one exactly as detailed. (I suppose you could have other info in there, this is the same (you have to edit an existing PHONE contact using “menu”)

3. Then open a related contact and touch the green “Linked” symbol or the gray “not linked” symbol. Choose the different contacts to link, linking the PHONE contact last.

The resulting Linked Contact won’t automatically use the right picture. Once linked, only 1 contact shows in your PEOPLE list. They are “layered” or “linked” contacts, however you wish to think of it. Choose the “PHONE” contact when you touch the picture in the “LINKED” screen. Then you have the right picture, the one ON YOUR PHONE associated with the linked contact. No icky Google, Flickr or other degraded or unwanted image will be used.

Of course you may not HAVE to ‘unlink’ everything to do this. Just know you have to UNLINK the Phone contact to be able to be sure you pick the picture & it’s is used permanently.

My idea for a new Evo owner would be, open PEOPLE & don’t link anything until you make phone contacts for whom you want better pictures connected to your contacts, make a PHONE contact with their name and PHOTO. Let the other info be filled in with Google or whatever else.

In my case I use Retro Camera app for a lot of pictures. I make a PHONE contact, choose a photo from my gallery, Crop it so that it looks right, it crops square, Retro Camera photos are square, so it’s really easy to get the right look using one. I mean, it’s not just the person or whatever, it’s styling as well. At any rate, if it’s what you want, it looks great to you, that’s all that you’ll want.

Try the above methodology, refine it however you can, understanding that I haven’t step-by-step gone through every jot and tittle of information about this. It’s more an idea with basic steps and understanding of what one needs to do to accomplish happy thoughts about the phone when making and receiving calls.

Seeing things much better

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I wrote about my new contacts the other day and now have an update. My re-visit I saw a different eye doctor and she listened to my complaints about the Mono Vision and tried a few new hand-held lenses for my left eye and finally adjusted my prescription and got me a new left-eye contact to put in. Voila! Magic!

She says I have 20/20 vision now with this change, which is unusual, difficult to achieve in Mono Vision contacts wearing. I can see far and nearer much better, no more wobbly weirdo feeling about it, conflicted in what I was seeing or feeling I was seeing a-times. As I put it when reading some lines for her, I could see them better, but more-so I felt CONFIDENT to say what I was seeing. A vast improvement.

I am able to read books now with my contacts in, have to still come to terms still with using one eye or the other as my main eye for different tasks, but it’s easier now to do so since one eye is much better than the other for this or that, no conflicting information any longer as I was having with my first week of Mono Vision contact wearing. It’s just a practice of which for what that I need to hone in on, closer work being the thing that matters here, not basic looking at the world, just the closer things like books, computers, things right nearer to a bit further, but still close, that need inspection. Right or left, not both or the other, but a focus with left being weird to automatically choose for close, and then switching to only right for further away close after that, being harder. That’s the best I can explain it in, it’s a trial and error approach to functioning, but the vision I get with things is good in other words, just need that bridge to change HOW I view things.

Seeing things differently

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I don’t have good distance vision, start losing detail a few feet from myself without corrective lenses. I can get by like that but don’t drive a car like that — I could if I didn’t need to read street name signs at all. I mean I can get around fine where I know everything, just can’t read at a distance and things get a bit fuzzy but are still recognizable. Corrective lenses just bring relief and readability. It’s more useful than that sounds, but that’s the basic truth of it.

My biggest need for corrective lenses is in stores. Bombarded with images of product is more than overwhelming. Send me to find something in a grocery store without having glasses on, for instance, and I might not find what I’m looking for, and I surely wouldn’t ask for help either (I’m just like that.) Simply having corrective lenses on in a store is a godsend.

I’ve been living for a few years with my old glasses, and finally had it yesterday when my toddler brought me my glasses he found on the table and they were in two pieces. They were my oldest glasses, the last ones with decent frames (not broken.) I had last had an eye exam some years before, not sure, in the 2000′s for sure though. At any rate I didn’t like my last prescription, so quit wearing the contacts after awhile and only wore the glasses at times when I desperately needed them. I then quit wearing them and pulled out a nice old pair of glasses from the 80′s that was a much simpler prescription and felt better to me, not quite strong enough, but that felt better than what my newer glasses felt like.

The past few years I’ve been using nothing or one of those two pairs of glasses. The frames on the newer ones broke on one side, I taped it up, but later the other side broke and I abandoned them for my eldest glasses thoroughly. Until yesterday, that is.

I haven’t gotten new glasses yet, have a prescription though. I am wearing a trial pair of contacts for a week. The doctor talked about maybe doing a mono-vision thing, but didn’t say he prescribed that, but now that I’m wearing them for awhile, I think he must have done such.

For me I want contacts for going out, shopping, outdoors, etc. I want them for watching movies, or just doing stuff in the house if I want to. I don’t want reading glasses, my own eyes read fine. My last contacts kept me from reading so much so that it’s the final straw I had about actually wearing those contacts and I endeavored to just get by with my own vision if I could, and maybe improve it if I could, but I didn’t find what I wanted to improve it per se, but feel I am not as bad off as before, that I learned to deal with it better, maybe that’s a better way to put it.

All in all, it’s a matter of I feel best without glasses on and need corrective lenses for being “out there” or else I sort of sink instead of swim. So I’m trying to be a swimmer and not be stuck in funky glasses that I don’t like on with my hair down, or wearing that outfit they look really stupid, that sort of thing. Freedom from presenting myself to the public with frames on if I so wish, but still wish to see something crisper than just the stuff right in front of my face.

Today is my big trial day since it’s the first full day with these contacts, and the sun is supposed to be shining, and it’ll be a nice day with a high later of about 70 degrees F. A very fine day for being outside. It rained yesterday, so my garden must be in want of a bit of attention and I’d be happy to do it and be able to see the other side of the yard, the birds in the trees over there, while not having to push up my glasses that keep slipping, or have to clean the pollen off the lenses … freedom within the boundaries of contacts is something I once loved and am giving a go about once again. I hope I can make sense of which eye is better for what since I am sure it’s not what I have ever had before (how the lense prescription is for me.)

I must recall my first experience with getting corrective lenses. I got glasses when I was 13 and my first remark outloud about them was “I didn’t know you could see the leaves on the trees!” It was a new world, not brown tree trunks with green tops, but individual leaves visible from a distance. Wow. That’s clarity for you. From wide to narrow. Fuzzy to crisp. Find Edges, found.