Geeks guide to Android phones, People management

So, you've bought a nice shiny new Google / Android phone, possibly even because I ranted so much about how brilliant mine is. Now you're not really sure what I was harping on about. If it was me, then there's a good chance you bought the HTC Desire.
Here's a few things to get you started on making the most of it. I'll assume you've already connected your phone to any Google or social networking accounts you use, as that doesn't seem to be a problem for
anyone.

First things first. People.
This phone makes managing vast numbers of contacts so nice and easy. Partly thanks to very slick Google synching so I'd recommend keeping your contacts stored in your Google account on your phone.
If you're not sure, run the People app, open the menu, then click 'View'.
This should show you all available contact sources (SIM, Phone, Google, Facebook etc etc). It'll also have a nice little count in brackets of how many contacts you have stored in each source. I wasn't going to do anything with this, just show you that it's there. You can cancel it now.

1. So if you've got information scattered across your SIM and Phone, you may as well move it into Google.
2. Hit menu again but choose Import/Export.
3. Choose Export to SD card and select SIM, then do the same again but choose Phone.
4. Once these are both done, start Import/Export again but this time choose Import from SD card.
5. Choose your Google account then wait while it searches for the export files you just created.
6. When prompted, select Import multiple vCard files and click OK.
7. Tick each of the files you just created and click OK.
8. You'll have some duplicates now, so best to delete them.
9. Choose View from the menu again and untick everything except Phone and SIM, click OK to confirm this.
10. From the menu, choose Delete.
11. Now you've got a list of all the duplicates, open the menu and choose Select all.
12. You can then click the delete button to remove them all.
13. Now all your contacts are only stored in Google. Ta-da!

• For those that like you're social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter etc etc), you can link a facebook account to a contact in your address book. Very handy. This means that if they're calling you and it's nearly their birthday for instance, your phone will remind you about it on the screen.
• If you're feeling properly geeky, you can now use Google Contacts (http://www.google.com/contacts) online to manage your phone book. There's a find duplicates button to help you clean things up a bit, and it'll integrate with Google Picasa so that anyone it's face recognition gizmo has found, can be assigned to a contact. So their face will appear when they call you. Nice touch.

So let's see if you survived that ok, I'll leave it a week or so and then you can try something else...