When I asked you yesterday if you’ve also been experience some serious SMS and dialer lag on the HTC EVO 4G LTE, I had no idea the response would be so strong. Lots of you have been discussing your own personal experiences, and the lag problem doesn’t seem to care if you’re rooted or not.
According to G&E reader Tanner, the root of the problem seems to be bug related to syncing contacts with Facebook:
I’ve confirmed that the slow loading of contacts (which affects the Messaging app, People app, and and anything else that does contact lookup) is indeed related to Facebook contact syncing. Once I reset my contacts file and removed all Facebook data, everything was back to normal again.
Since this issue only seems to be affecting HTC Sense users, I’d add that it is probably an issue with Facebook for HTC, which is an underlying app that actually takes care of the syncing, rather than the native Facebook app. In any case, no longer syncing with Facebook has seemed to clear up this issue for many people, but – of course – your mileage may vary. While some are swearing by this solution, others say that it’s only a temporary fix, and that the issue will return again later.
To disable the contact sync, just follow these steps:
- Go to Settings > Accounts & sync > Facebook. Uncheck Sync Contacts and Sync live feed.
- Go to Settings > Accounts & sync > Google. Uncheck Sync Contacts.
- Go to Settings > Apps > All > Contacts Storage. Select Force stop, Clear cache, Clear data.
- Reboot your phone.
- Launch the People app and make sure your contacts are not listed.
- Go to Settings > Accounts & sync > Google. Select Sync Contacts, and wait for Google to finish syncing. Do not reselect contact sync in Facebook.
Tanner wrote:
Voila! Once I did the above, speed of all the apps accessing my contacts file was back to normal, and my contacts file itself shrunk down from 37MB to 6.5MB!
PS – I haven’t turned Facebook syncing back on just now since it’s possible that turning it back on would slow everything down again. I’m not sure. For now, I prefer to just leave FB Contact syncing off until I have more time to play with it again.
If you try this, be sure to let us know if it works for you – and for how long.
What about FB calendar sync as well? I can’t see that creating an issue, but maybe someone has figured out that it could be? I’ve done the fix, and it seems to be working better, but left calendar sync on.
Also, this has done nothing for the terrible lag on SMS that it sometimes takes a while for texts to send, as well as receiving others not in a timely manner or possibly duplicates. Any suggestions for that?
Might be a network problem…
That’s what I’m thinking, but I just wanted to make sure these were two distinct issues, and more than likely not related to each other…
Th eproblem is that this method wips out all of the contacts stored only on the phone.
Why would you only store contacts on the phone?
The point is that if you store your contacts on your phone or more corectly if you do not want to store your contacts on google, they are lost using the procedure above.
Unfortunately I read this several weeks ago on another forum and since then I have not resynced my Facebook contacts – and the problem still exists. I don’t think this is the solution!
Yea facebook contact sync messed up all my contacts on my og evo. I will never use it again.
I don’t use FB, and I’m all stock, but I’ve been experiencing same lag (sms, contacts, email contacts) as everyone else…
I use fb and have everything synced and don’t have any issues whatsoever. Maybe I’m one of the lucky ones. Sorry to everyone having a problem. I’m stock not rooted. My evo fly’s and never has issues. Every know and then tho I reset my phone just to do it. Give it a fresh go. Maybe once a week. Seems to keep everything running perfectly.
About 2 months ago, one night all my contacts got messed up. It was weird, I dialed a friend by going thru my history list and dialed by selecting his picture, but then I found out I had dialed a different friend but I was looking at the picture of the friend I wanted to call, then I realized that the name of the person displaying on my phone was from yet another person in my contact list, so I had the information of three different contacts all screwed up. I fixed it by removing the sync option with face book, rebooted my phone, then I went back to settings and check the option to sync contacts and the problem was fixed. I haven’t had the same issue since then. It was very weird because ever since I remember I have always use the option to sync contacts with facebook.
IVE NEVER SYNCED my fb contacts or anything with fb except for logging in so i havnt had that lag problem on my evo.. but good to know
This fix has also worked on the T-Mobile HTC One S that was experiencing the same problems. I regards to those still experiencing the issue have you tried leaving the Facebook app off your phone completely? With the new mobile browsers Facebook is just as good on them with out the issues of the app.
It’s not the FB app, it’s Facebook for HTC Sense that is causing the issues…as per the article.
But if you check the settings of the app it will default to sync with your contacts you need to set it not to sync or you might have the same problem again. I stopped FB from doing anything with my contacts through the app or FB for HTC so far the lag has stopped.
I don’t have a check or uncheck box inside account and sync if I touch it, it wants to sync. Only had the option to remove account? Anyone else? Help?
Ah, have to have auto sync enabled. Then the check boxes appear.
I may be one of the only people in the world to not have a Facebook account, so I know that this isn’t the cause.
I not only experienced the sms lag, but many other issues I didn’t even realize until after I did the recommended factory reset.
I think syncing in general was just another symptom of a bigger issue as I noticed problems with my G+ account syncing.
Whatever it is, factory reset got me up and running again.
I use facebook contact sync from the play store and have never experienced this issue. It’s better actually because you can choose to since 720×720 images so that they aren’t blurry in your call screen.
I had lag in most applications that involved contacts. After performing the steps above…I’m back in love!
Thanks John
I copied my contacts to my sd card and reloaded them after following the above steps. Unsyncing FB fixed my text and contacts lag. Also my battery life is a lot better after the fact. I had a slew of apps that operated horribly because they accessed my contacts and now they work flawlessy.
How did you copy your contacts to the SD card?
Go into your contacts, pull up the menu and click on “manage contacts” , then click “import/export contacts”, then export to storage card. Then select the account you want to export to storage card and that should do the trick. Once that is done your contacts will be saved as vCard file. You import the files if you lose all your contacts. Don’t import twice you will have duplicates of all your contacts, I found out the hard way. This worked for me, not sure if anyone else has tried it.
Thank you thank you. I thought I was the only one! This lag problem started happening the beginning of September. I have been searching the web looking for a solution. The HTC site seems to be worthless (to say the least). I was even thinking about moving to the iPhone..lol
Has anyone tried using “Contact Sync for Facebook”? It seems to get great reviews. I think I will test it in a few days. I want to make sure the problem does not happen again under the current setup. I am a heavy fb user and google contacts user….they number into the thousands.
I hope people from HTC read this or are aware of the issue. They need to get it corrected. They also need to step it up and release their version of Jellybean.
I hate how you can’t just sync your contacts that have Facebook to Facebook it has to sync every Facebook friend you have. I stopped syncing Facebook along time ago. I hate how it works since the OG EVO.
But I did have my news feed and my calendar checked. Should I uncheck newsfeed too? My Handcent ocasionaly lags an is slow opening to where I see a black screen for a bit before it acually opens. But I had to get a new phone a few weeks ago and this one isn’t as bad as my old one. I’ll uncheck sync live feed though and see if I notice a difference. My contacts weren’t synced so I am not gonna clear out my contact storage.