HTC Desire and Facebook contacts

For anyone out there using a HTC Desire, like me, you may have recently gone from proud owner to frustrated owner.  The reason… Your phone appears to have added ‘44’ to some of your contacts, which when called fails.  It would appear the issue is Facebook related.  When people register for Facebook mobile it automatically adds ‘44’ to UK numbers.  It should add ‘+44’.  Replacing 07123… with 447123… makes the number unrecognisable to telephony system.

After a little searching I came across the following solution, I’ve trued it and it works like a dream.  I can now call myself a proud HTC Desire owner again.

With much thanks to the author of the article here.

I do hope he won’t mind me quoting part of the solution below.

First, if you have the ‘Friend Stream’ widget open on one of your home pages, you must remove it. Go to the home page the widget is open on, press and hold your finger on the top of it, and drag it  down to the ‘remove’ button.

Next you must remove your facebook account from the sync menu. To do this, go to:

Settings > Accounts & Sync.
Click on the facebook for HTC Sense app.
Click remove account and confirm it.

Next, while you are in the sync menu:

Untick ‘Auto-sync’.
Untick ‘Background data’ and confirm.

Click Add account.
Click Facebook for HTC Sense.
Enter your Email and password.
Click ‘Sign in’.

Right, now this is the slightly tricky part so read this part carefully before you rush into it, otherwise you will have to do it all again.

Tick the ‘Background data’ check box.

Get one finger ready on the button that currently says “Sync All” down the bottom left. When you tick the ‘Auto-sync button’ this button will change to ‘Cancel Sync’. You need to tick the  ‘Auto Sync’ and then INSTANTLY press on the cancel sync button ONCE.

Next click on the Facebook for HTC Sense logo.
Untick ‘Sync Contacts’.

Note: There should be no date or time information written under either ‘Sync Live Feed’ or ‘Sync Contacts’. If there is, you need to remove the facebook account again and start over. It means it has allready synced which is not what you want.

Next, untick ‘Sync contacts’ but leave ‘Sync live feed’ ticked.

You can press the ‘Sync Now’ button if you want to sync the live feed now.

You can now go back to your home page. Check the phone menu and it should not contain any of your facebook contacts. Again, if it does, try doing it again (it’s never failed for me personally and I’ve done it a few times to show people).

You can then add your friend stream widget to the home page again by clicking the ‘ + ‘, Selecting Widget, and then selecting the friend stream widget.

The author suggests using a free app call ‘Sync My Pics’ which can be found in the Android Market.