How To Recover Lost Phone Contacts

How To Recover Your Lost Phone Contacts.

Unfortunately for most phone users, our phone contacts vanish into the thin air maybe as a result of slight carelessness or your phone must have been stolen and all the contacts we've known were saved to the lost gadget.

Sure, I've been in such shoes and I know how frustrating this situation might be and that's the reason I had to put up this write up in order to expose the possibility of getting your lost phone contacts back.

Although, this article is focus written for Android users because of the Google backup feature but I'd also include possible ways to recover lost contacts for readers who use smaller gadgets and before I go into the main content of this write up, possible ways of how one can loose his/her contacts will be listed below.

Possible Cause Of Phone Contact Loss

• Contacts Deleted Accidentally
• Phone Factory Restore 
• Phone Root process
• Mobile phone stolen/lost

The above list may be the possible cause of loosing your contacts but there is no need to panic because there is a chance that all your contacts are still on your device and all you just need to do is read this article carefully.

How To Recover Phone Contacts Via Google Backup.

Like I said earlier, this article is more focused on Android users because several features are being included for safety and preservation which includes the Google Backup.

Google Backup enables Android users to backup all settings, contacts, messages, photos, videos and every other thing you can think of. This things are being saved on a server in which you can retrieve with ease as long as your Google mail and password is Handy.

How Do You Retrieve Via Google Backup?

Once you have backed up any of this things or your phone contacts to be precise, you can easily retrieve by following the steps below;

• Go to Settings on your mobile menu
• Scroll down to Google (services and preferences) and click on it
• Navigate to "Restore Contacts" 
• Log into your Google mail and all backed up contacts will be restored.

Note: You can only recover contacts using this method when you have backed them up though most Androids come with an automatic backup for contacts but you still need to check them up to ensure it's backed up.

How To Recover Hidden Contacts

In most occasions, you may end up discovering that your contacts were not lost, deleted but hidden so in such cases, you don't need to call for an expert or a phone technician to come fix for you because you may end up spending money.

All you need to do is, 

• Open the “Contacts” app
• Click on the menu in the top-right corner (three vertical dots)
• “Contacts to display”
• Select “All contacts” if it isn’t already

This will end up displaying all contacts including those that were hidden before but if it ended up showing not, it means your contacts were actually deleted not hidden.

How To Recover Contacts on A New Phone

Maybe you lost your old phone and you need your contacts back on your new phone, it is absolutely possible to get your contacts back as long as you had them backed up on your old device.

How? Simply log in to your Google account, the same one you used in your lost or old phone. Once you are logged in, follow the procedures I included in the first step above to get your contacts back.

How To Recover Contacts Via Device's Contact Database File

This method is a bit more technical and it requires a root support to your device.

So, if your device was wiped (Reset) this method will enable you to recover your lost contacts although this may depend on your manufacturer and Android version, you will find your database in different locations in your storage. For some stock Android gadgets like the Nexus 5, the database file should be located in the "/data/data/android.providers.contacts/databases"

The key that your are looking for is providers.contacts/databases. 

To access this folder straight from your device, install aSQLiteManager, which is able to get into your Android device’s database storage and open .db files.

If you can find this folder on your device and it’s empty, then I guess your contacts are gone.

How To Recover Contacts Via Sim Backups

Most Sims come with a backup feature embedded in the Sim tool kit, this enables you to recover your lost contacts only if they were backed up..