Contact Merge/Sync Issue in Droid X
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I think potential users of the Droid X who intend to sync with Microsoft Exchange should realize that the contact manager on the phone causes some real issues with how contacts are displayed. I have 2,300 contacts in Outlook, and when I got the Droid X this week and set it up to synch with our corporate exchange server, I ended up with only 1,700 contacts on my device. After spending hours troubleshooting it (thinking it was a sync issue), it was escalated to Motorola Level 3 support, They quickly indicated it is a design issue where the contact data manager on the device tries to link/combine together contacts from your various sources (Gmail, Verizon, Yahoo, corporate, etc.) into a condensed set of contacts. Unfortunately, it apparently does this by looking for common pieces of information (phone numbers, addresses, etc.), such that if you have multiple contacts at the same company or if you have similar contacts (say for both a business and someone working for that business), they get combined together in inappropriate ways. You can apparently go into each contact on the device and break the link, but that is impractical as a workaround.
It seems to me that however a user sets up contacts in Outlook (or elsewhere), that layout should be respected by the device and not changed.
The Motorola service rep indicated that he had previously relayed a request to their engineers that users be able to select whether or not they want contacts automatically linked, but this has not been implemented.
The Droid X also doesn't let you sort contacts other than by first name/last name, another bad feature that seems silly. The Motorola rep also indicated that this design request had not been implemented.
I've been a Blackberry user for years, and while I love the large screen on the Droid X and the other applications, these contact issues are significant and don't make it workable for me in a corporate environment, so I've returned it to Verizon. (This also happened to be device #2 in a week; Verizon took back device #1 went back because it could receive but would not transmit emails). I am told by my company's IT group that the iPhone does not handle contacts in this same way.
On a happier note, both the VZW and Motorola customer support centers provided timely and helpful support.
