How to view my SIM card contacts on Android?

The functionality of today's smartphones running on the Android OS makes it possible to save phone book contacts on several media (on the iPhone the choice is somewhat reduced). This gives a lot of flexibility, but can cause unintentional loss of such data in a situation where we simply forget where exactly we saved the numbers. How can you see exactly where all the contacts are saved - in the memory of your mobile phone or on the SIM card? We'll tell you in our material.

How to see where contacts are saved on your phone or SIM card

The functionality of today's smartphones running on the Android OS makes it possible to save phone book contacts on several media (on the iPhone the choice is somewhat reduced). This gives a lot of flexibility, but can cause unintentional loss of such data in a situation where we simply forget where exactly we saved the numbers. How can you see exactly where all the contacts are saved - in the memory of your mobile phone or on the SIM card? We'll tell you in our material.

Proven Ways to Retrieve Contacts from a Broken Phone with a Broken Screen

The absence of direct interaction with water during a fall makes it very easy to recover data from the SIM and external memory of the phone. To do this, just take out an SD or operator card and place it in another work phone.

Below we will look at other ways to gain access to a phone with a broken display:

• via USB cable;
• Email;
• special programs;
• cloud data storage;
• ADB protocol.

Let's consider what difficulties users usually encounter, how to help yourself in such a situation, and how to look up numbers on a broken phone.

Options for saving phone book contacts

As you know, modern Android smartphones have several ways to save contacts from the phone book

Usually they come down to saving to:

If your phone works stably and without glitches, then all options are equally good and do not have any special advantages over each other. However, if you regularly change gadgets, have ever lost one, or are often out of range of a wireless network (for example, on an airplane), then you should be more careful about saving contacts from your phone book.

phone storage option is great, as long as you don't want to replace your device. At this point, you will need to transfer your contacts to a new device, and the contacts on your old phone will no longer be needed. Additionally, if you lose your smartphone, you will lose all the data on it. Next, we will learn how to look at exactly where contacts are saved on the phone or on the SIM card.

Transfer your contacts to your Google account

The fourth option is to record your list in your Samsung (and other phone manufacturers) account. The method works in a similar way with a Google account.

If you have a gadget on which you previously saved numbers, you may wonder where exactly you added them. Let's look at ways to find out how to look at this.

How to extract contacts via Viber

If you have used the Viber on your phone and computer, then you can pull out contacts from this application. It won't be too easy since Viber doesn't provide any tools for exporting contacts, but you can at least extract them manually.

To access your contact list, simply launch the Viber application on your computer and go to the Contacts section. Here you will find a complete list of all contacts that were saved on your broken phone.

Unfortunately, if the Viber client has not been installed on your computer, then you will not be able to use this method. Since a work phone is required to install and synchronize the client.

Where are contacts stored on Android: location

Where are contacts stored on Android? It is important for every mobile device user to know the answer to this question, because their safety depends on it. If you reset the device to factory settings, and the phone book is saved on the internal storage, you risk being left without the numbers of friends and acquaintances. To avoid this situation taking you by surprise, copy and synchronize your contact database to virtual storage.

Directory Search

All that remains to be done is to find the folder with the corresponding data on your mobile device. Where are contacts stored in Android? They will be located in the contacts.db or contacts2.db document. These are the ones you will have to look for on your mobile device.

Where are contacts stored in Android? In order to copy the phone book from the device, you need to find the previously mentioned document. It is located in the data directory. You need to open the following chain of folders:

• data(2 times);
• com.android.providers.contacts;
• databases.

After this, in the last folder you need to find contacts/contacts2. This is the phone book. It can be copied, deleted or transferred to another device. Typically, this will require root rights. For example, using specialized programs. Among them are iRoot and KingRoot.

Where are the contacts on Android via a computer?

A database is a document where all information is organized. It does not catch the eye, because it is located in the root storage of the directory. If you want to find and remove it via PC, you will need a USB cable.

5 points that will help you determine where your contacts are located in Android via a computer.

GMail

The phone numbers that a person has synchronized are visible on any device where this account is open. So if you log into your Google account from a computer or laptop, you can find the desired subscriber in memory.

Sync Android with Google - where to find contacts

One of the services is Google Drive. This is 15 gigabytes of free space where music, photos, videos, audio tracks and other files are recorded. The address book is also saved there. If there is a photo on the account in the book, it is duplicated, and when updating, the system will pull it up on its own.

Connecting a mobile device to a computer

First you need to connect the device to the computer. An original USB cable is used for this. When a device is connected, it is identified, for which drivers are needed. Some Android mobile devices are detected without special drivers, others are not.

For many phones and tablets, manufacturers create special programs that make it possible to transfer music and images. However, they cannot be used to open operating system folders in which the information in question is saved. The computer can also help you save the necessary data through backup. If you need an Android emulator, you can download it on our portal.

You can open a device folder only if it has been defined as a drive. In this case, the computer's operating system explorer opens, after which all information from the device's operating system will be available. It is worth considering that some folders may be hidden by default.

To read them, you must indicate that the computer can see system hidden folders. It is also possible to use special applications that see hidden folders.

Even if you manage to open the device directory, finding the file in which contacts are recorded will be quite difficult. This is due to the fact that all system folders are named differently. In this case, the required file cannot be opened using the usual method, since not all programs can read its extension.

Where is the best place to store contacts on Android?

A logical question that arises with such diversity: where are Android contacts stored in the phone’s memory? There is a corresponding folder in Explorer. Depending on the gadget model, it is called “contacts” or “contacts2”. But it is important to consider that if something happens to the phone’s memory or the smartphone itself, there is a risk of losing important information. Therefore, it is important to make additional backups.

There are several applications that will help you save numbers from the book to the cloud. One of the most functional is “Save contacts”. For Android it is available on Google Play and can be installed for free. However, there is a limit on memory usage. There is a paid subscription, it provides more features.

In a few clicks, the numbers are moved to this application and uploaded to a text document in Excel, ODS, PDF, archive and others. Such formats are readable on all modern gadgets.

The Save Contacts program allows you to recover phone numbers from a text file. She saves the number, name, email. The software has a simple interface and nice design. The developers also took care of security, so there will be no data leakage.

On SIM card

You won't be able to fit many numbers here. Depending on how new the card is, it will contain from 20 to 200 records. But if you lose your phone, you can only restore the numbers by restoring the SIM.

On the phone

There is much more space in the internal memory. The number that fits there is at least 1000 numbers, it all depends on the amount of memory. But if the device is broken or lost, it cannot be restored.

How to get Android data from the cloud?

The convenience of working with the Google service is that when registering a mobile device, an account is created in Gmail.com. It will also continue to synchronize information from your Google account and smartphone after accepting the user agreement.

To get contacts from the cloud from your computer if your Android is broken, use your mailbox. In the upper left corner, click the “Gmail” and “Contacts” icon. In the upper right corner we find an image in the form of tiles with the caption “Google Applications”, go to “Drive”, select the file “Contacts.vcf”. You can select “Backups”.

The easiest way to do this is to go to www.google.com/contacts and copy contacts from a broken Android to a new Android smartphone. On your work device, enter your account information and turn on synchronization.

Where to store contacts on Android

Smartphone phone book data can be stored in two places and comes in two completely different types. The first is entries in application accounts that have an address book or its equivalent. The second is an electronic document saved in the internal memory of the phone and containing absolutely all the contacts available on the device and in the accounts connected to it. Users are most often interested in this, but we will tell you about each of the available options.

Option 1: Application Accounts

On a smartphone with a relatively recent version of the Android operating system, contacts can be stored in the internal memory or in one of the accounts. The latter, in most cases, is the Google account used on the device to gain access to the services of the search giant. Other, additional options are possible - accounts “from the manufacturer”. Thus, Samsung, ASUS, Xiaomi, Meizu and many others allow you to save important user information, including your address book, in their own storage facilities, which act as some kind of analogue of a Google profile. Such an account is created when you first set up your device, and it can also be used as the default place to save contacts.

Note: On older smartphones, it was possible to save phone numbers not only to the device memory or main account, but also to the SIM card. Now contacts from SIM cards can only be viewed, extracted, and saved to another location.

In the case described above, the standard Contacts application is used to access the data contained in the address book. But in addition to it, other applications can be installed on the mobile device, which have their own address book, in one form or another. These include instant messengers (Viber, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.), email and social networking clients (for example, Facebook and its Messenger) - each of them has a “Contacts” tab or menu item. At the same time, the information displayed in them can either be pulled from the main address book presented in the standard application, or be saved there manually.

Summarizing the above, we can draw a logical, albeit very banal, conclusion - contacts are stored in the selected account or on the device itself. It all depends on which location you chose as the main one, or what was initially specified in the device settings. Regarding address books of third-party applications, we can say that they, rather, act as some kind of aggregators of existing contacts, although they provide the ability to add new entries.

Searching and synchronizing contacts Having finished with the theory, let's move on to a little practice. We'll tell you where and how to view the list of accounts connected to a smartphone or tablet running Android OS and enable their synchronization if it has been disabled.

How to pull contacts through Google account

One of the easiest ways to retrieve contacts from a broken Android phone is with a Google account. The fact is that this account is required for many functions of the Android phone to work. For example, without it you cannot install applications from the Play Market. Therefore, in most cases, you have a Google account on any device.

Among other things, your Google account is used to synchronize contacts saved on your phone with the Google Contacts . Therefore, if your contacts were saved on your phone and you did not turn off the synchronization function, then they should be available in Google Contacts.

In order to retrieve contacts from the Google Contacts service, you need to go to https://contacts.google.com/ and log in using your Google account that you previously used on your phone. If you don't remember your password, you can try to restore access to your account. If a phone number was linked to your account, then this will not be difficult.

After logging into Google Contacts, you will see a list of contacts that have been synced from your phone. Here on the left side of the window you need to find the “ Export ” option. With its help, you can extract contacts from the service and save them to your computer.

After clicking on the “ Export ” button, a menu with settings will appear in front of you. Here you need to select the contacts you want to export and the file format. The Google CSV format is suitable for importing into Google Contacts on another account, and the vCard format is suitable for importing the Contacts application on your phone.

After selecting the format, click on the “Export” button and download the file to your computer. If you selected the vCard format, the downloaded file will have the VCF extension.

The export menu states that the vCard format is intended for iOS devices, but it can also be imported into Android phones. To do this, you need to copy the VCF file to your phone, go to the Contacts application and find the Import option there. With its help, you can download contacts from a VCF file to the phone's memory.

For example, on phones with pure Android 10.0, to import contacts, you need to open the “ Phone ” application and go to “ Settings - Import ”.

You can also skip Export/Import contacts and simply add your existing Google account when setting up your new phone for the first time. After connecting to the Internet, the contacts themselves are synchronized with the Google Contacts service and will appear on the new phone.

Method via USB cable and PC: how to enable USB debugging?

If something goes wrong with your phone, don’t be upset. To gain absolute access to the device and be able to remotely update the smartphone software, create backups and restore lost data, and move files from Android to PC, you should use ADB.

But first you need to enable USB debugging. There are several versions of operating systems; accordingly, we will consider options for enabling debugging for each version.

For Android software 2 and 3. Go to the menu. Select “Settings”. The next thing we need is to go to “Applications”. Open them and find a section called “Development”. Here we see the USB Debugging feature. We agree with the “Yes” button.

Version 4 of the Android operating system. Of course, we go to the device menu. Select settings. We are looking for a category called “System”. Select information “About phone”. Please pay attention to “Version Information”. In the “Build number” parameters, click until a window appears with the inscription “You have become a developer.” We return to the “System” again. We are looking for a new point. This will be the already connected “For Developers” section, where the necessary “USB Debugging” will appear. Let's choose.

Version 5. From the settings you need to go to the “About phone” information. We are looking for parameters. Select "Build number". A few clicks and “You have become a developer”! Again we go to the initial settings. We turn to the “Advanced” category. We are looking for the corresponding menu item: “For developers”. We continue by going to the “USB Debugging” category. All is ready!

How to use ADB for recovery and copying

Before you begin the recovery work, you need to download ADB from the official website qtadb.wordpress.com, download version QtADB 0.8.1 (tested on Windows 7) or the “Android Debug Bridge” driver to your computer.

This program is for extracting data from broken android. Let's look at step-by-step instructions that will help you extract files using the capabilities of a personal computer from a broken Android smartphone:

• download Adb Run on PC;
• unpack;
• We are looking for the required file called “adb.exe”;
• run as administrator;
• A blue window pops up;
• Press the “y” and “Enter” keys several times;
• load the mobile device;
• connect the phone to the computer via USB;
• open “Task Manager”;
• select your mobile device;
• right-click to open the menu;
• select the item “Update drivers”;
• go to the “adb” folder;
• press “Shift”;
• choose a free place;
• open the “command line”, start-type “cmd”-press “enter”. Here you need to be especially careful;
• carefully write “adb pull /data/data/com.android.providers.contacts/databases/contacts2.db”;
• press “Enter”.

The final file will have a db extension. To open it, use Excel. And having converted it to csv, you can restore the phone book back by importing contacts.