[SOLVED] Contact picture size... is this new in OS 3.0?

[daihard]

Hi.

I've been scratching my head over this for a few weeks. Hope someone can help me out.

The picture assigned to a contact on the iPhone should show up full-size when the contact calls me or when I call him/her, even after I sync my iPhone with my Mac (including the contacts, which are synced to Address Book).

However, since updating to OS 3.0, I see the small version of the picture showing up at the top right corner of the screen instead of full-size once the contact has been synced.

If I remember correctly, syncing would not cause that to happen before 3.0; that is, the picture would remain full-size as long as it was originally added to a contact via iPhone by pressing the button on the bottom left corner and choosing "Assign to Contact." That behaviour seems to have changed with 3.0.

Can anyone confirm this? And if so, is there a way to get around it? I'd like to have full-size pictures to show up on my iPhone screen all the time.

Thanks in advance!

 

[-aggie-]

Well, I've synced a number of times and all my pics are still full size, since 3.0 and even 3.1.

 

[abijnk]

How did you do your upgrade to 3.0+? ( specifically did you do a full restore or use the "update" button?)

 

[daihard]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

How did you do your upgrade to 3.0+? ( specifically did you do a full restore or use the "update" button?)

OS 3.0 came with my 3G S. My observation on the old behaviour was with the 3G I had.

 

[bytethese]

How did you do your upgrade to 3.0+? ( specifically did you do a full restore or use the "update" button?)

This is what I am thinking too. If you sync'd your phone, upgraded with a full restore, then the contacts would sync from the address book putting in the smaller pics and not the larger ones I believe.

 

[PhightinPhils26]

I notice this is what happens when it syncs OTA via MobileMe or Google.

 

[daihard]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7C144 Safari/528.16)

How did you do your upgrade to 3.0+? ( specifically did you do a full restore or use the "update" button?)

This is what I am thinking too. If you sync'd your phone, upgraded with a full restore, then the contacts would sync from the address book putting in the smaller pics and not the larger ones I believe.

I know what you're saying. I've done a clean restore ("as a new phone") a couple of times for other reasons too. However, I 've also removed the contact I question on both my iPhone and Address Book, synced there to make sure the removed contact did not magically show up, and then recreated it on the iPhone and added the pic there. Is there any step I'm missing?

 

[-aggie-]

This is what I am thinking too. If you sync'd your phone, upgraded with a full restore, then the contacts would sync from the address book putting in the smaller pics and not the larger ones I believe.

Nope, I restored as new, and the pics were still large.

Don't you wish they had a better manual to explain how syncing actually works?

 

[mappyman]

If they disappear from your phone's camera roll / library and you never backed them up some other way then syncing from google will always give you the small portraits.

Google only makes a thumbnail backup so don't rely on it.

 

[UngratefulNinja]

Sweet Aggie is in time out What could he have done?

 

[ngenerator]

I propose a better explanation:

If you take a picture w/ your iPhone, then save it to a contact that way, it will always be full screen, no matter how many times you restore/resync, etc. This is my observation with quite a few of my contacts.

If you add a contact picture via any other way (I sync my contacts with Outlook), it will show as a thumbnail.

I don't remember where I read it, but it might have been in the iPhone manual. Hope this helps!

 

[daihard]

As it turned out, the culprit was the new feature in Snow Leopard that lets your address book sync directly with your Google contacts.

Traditionally, I've only synced my Gmail contacts with Address Book via iTunes. As long as I keep it that way, the full-size contact pictures will remain so no matter how many times you sync your iPhone with iTunes. Once you turn on the option inside your Address Book to enable syncing with your Google contacts, then the hell will break loose.

So the solution is to leave the "sync with Google" option in Address Book disabled.

Thanks everyone for the kind responses.

 

[wackymacky]

I propose a better explanation:

If you take a picture w/ your iPhone, then save it to a contact that way, it will always be full screen, no matter how many times you restore/resync, etc. This is my observation with quite a few of my contacts.

If you add a contact picture via any other way (I sync my contacts with Outlook), it will show as a thumbnail.

I don't remember where I read it, but it might have been in the iPhone manual. Hope this helps!

I have found when I add pictures using on-line Mobile Me (i.e at http://www.me.com) they allways show up as the small icon rather that a full size picture when that number calls regardless of future syncing.