When you try to save a contact on your Android smartphone, you get options to save it to three different locations. The first is the phone, the second is the SIM, and the third is Google. While the availability of options is great, it can also cause a great deal of confusion.
There are merits and demerits of saving your contacts to any of these channels. You should note, however, that you don’t have to choose one; you can save your contacts on your phone and eventually back them up to Google, for instance.
Doing that all the time can get pretty cumbersome, and that isn’t really what you want to use all your time for. To prevent all the confusion that may come up as a result of the excessive options available for saving contacts, this article will show you if you should save your contacts to your phone, SIM, or Google.
Should I Save Contacts to SIM?
One of the most popular options when it comes to saving contacts is saving them to your SIM. This option has always been available, as the process of saving contacts to the SIM predates the ability to save it to your phone, and of course, to platforms like Google.
However, there’s no reason why you should save your contacts to your SIM unless you use multiple phones and you switch a bit too often, and even at that, saving contacts to your SIM will not be necessary.
When it comes to privacy, you should expect roughly the same level of privacy as saving it to Google or your phone. Both Google and your phone will eventually be able to read your contacts anyway, so why bother?
About size, however, your SIM can hold roughly 200 contacts maximum. The exact size will vary depending on your carrier, but you shouldn’t expect anything over that number. It sure looks respectable, but when you compare it to the numbers for your phone or Google, it’s just ridiculous.
When it comes to practicality, you can move your contacts on your SIM by physically moving your SIM. If you lost your SIM, performing a SIM swap will not restore your contacts; you’ll need to start looking for them from scratch. That makes the SIM option the most likely to get your contacts lost.
Generally, saving your contacts to your SIM isn’t bad, but you shouldn’t make it your best choice.
Should I Save Contacts to Phone?
If you’re not using your SIM, the next obvious option is saving your contacts to your phone’s internal storage. Most modern smartphones will let you save your contacts directly to your phone, even if you don’t have an active SIM inserted into the device.
One of the biggest advantages of choosing the phone over your SIM’s limited memory is its ability to store more than just names and numbers. When you save contacts on your SIM, you can only add basic information like the name to the phone number, but when saving to your phone, you can also add the contact’s occupation and some other information.
Another reason why your phone’s storage is a better option is how many contacts it can hold. While most SIM cards will hold only 200 contacts at most, your phone can hold thousands, with the exact number varying with the specific make and model of your phone.
If you’re using a modern smartphone, it should have some kind of movability. When you set up a phone, you should be required to add an account; most likely a Google account or otherwise. You can easily log in with this account on another device to move all your contacts.
With all the explanations given, it’s pretty obvious that your phone is better than your SIM for storing contacts, but there’s something even better: saving contacts to Google.
Should I Save Contacts to Google?
Every modern Android device will require you to sign into a Google account for you to start using the device. One of the benefits of signing in during your phone’s setup is the feature that lets you save your phone’s contacts to Google, and trust me, it’s even better than saving to your phone or SIM.
Unless someone gets unauthorized access to your Google account, contacts you save to Google are secure and protected from onlookers or bad actors. It also syncs with your device in real-time, so you can access your contacts whenever you want them.
My favorite part of saving contacts to Google is how it synchronizes all your devices. If you have more than one device, you can sign up with the same Google account on all of them, save a contact on one, and it will be instantly available on the other.
When it comes to the sheer number of contacts it can hold, it’s 25,000. To put that in the right context, Google can hold as much as 125 times the number of contacts you can store on your SIM; imagine having to carry around 125 SIM cards at the same time.
Should I Save Contacts to SIM or Phone or Google?
At this point, I’ve provided more than enough information to help you make an informed decision about where to save your contacts if you’re using an Android phone. You can choose whichever works best for you, but as you asked, I’ll make recommendations.
The most practical way to store your contacts, especially if you have tons of them that you need across multiple devices, is by saving them to your Google account. If that’s not an option for you, you may want to consider saving them to your phone; keeping contacts on your SIM should be a reluctant last resort.
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Conclusion
Saving contacts shouldn’t take too much effort, and it doesn’t. However, people tend to suffer from undecidedness when they have too many options. Since your Android phone gives you three different options to save your contacts, this article will help you decide.