Keep Losing Some Gmail Contacts

[galaxyandbeyond]

I keep all 375 of my contacts in Gmail and want them on my phone as well.  *Most* stay on the phone. However, from time to time, some unknown number of contacts disappear from my phone. To get them back, I end up going to contacts.google.com, edit the contact there (by adding a space to a note, for example), and within moments it's back on my phone. But this is getting very frustrating and I'd love to find a solution.  Here's what this is NOT about:

1. I've seen numerous threads about issues with Verizon Cloud stored contacts and those don't apply to me.
2. I've seen threads about deleted contacts and my contacts are very much in tact up at Google. It's just that a handful (different each time) end up going missing from my phone.
3. I've seen threads about ALL contacts ending up gone but this is just a random subset of my contacts.
4. I've seen threads about "Contacts to display" being set wrong and it's currently set to "All contacts" and always has been.

Technical Details

• Samsung Galaxy S5, SAMSUNG-SM-G900V
• Android version 5.0, Kernel Version 3.4.0, Build # LRX21T.G900VVRU2BOG5 (applied Aug 13, 2015 - Prior update was Jul 1, 2015)
• I do NOT recall when this began - but possibly over the summer - possibly after that July 1st update!?
• Contacts app Version 5.0.1.0074011
• Contacts are stored On Device (I can't move the Contacts App to the SD Card) - App Info tells me there's 52.00KB of Data and 64.00KB of SD card data
• Space on Device: I've never fallen below 700MB of free space on the device.  In fact, I've got 1.54GB available today and I just found today I'm missing at least one contact.
• I usually discover a contact is missing when I get a call or text without any Contact info along with it like a name. In fact, what prompted me to write this is that I got a call today from a contact I had interacted with by phone back on August 1st. So at some point between then and now it went missing.  If I notice more I'll do the same search (this is the first time I've thought to check for recent activity in my dialer or text logs).
• As mentioned - a reliable fix is to launch contacts.google.com in a browser and edit the contact. Even just adding 1 space to the contact will cause it to sync back onto my phone.

Thanks in advance

[vzw_customer_support]

@galaxyandbeyond

I can definitely understand how this would cause some frustration for you.  I would love to assist you in resolving this device issue.

I would first like to thank you for providing me so much detail.  This helps us find the best solution for you.  Have you factory reset your device http://vz.to/1wRrSEw since your device completed the last software update?  Please keep me posted.

AnthonyTa_VZW
Follow us on Twitter @VZWSupport

If my response answered your question please click the "Correct Answer" button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

[galaxyandbeyond]

Short answer is No, I haven't done a factory reset.

Longer answer is, that's a bit extreme isn't it? Dozens of apps, music, and content all ends up getting wiped and needing to be re-downloaded/sync'd and then reconfigured. All without any attempt at identifying root cause so no real confidence it would solve this?  Is there anything anywhere that says this kind of problem is resolved by a reset?

[galaxyandbeyond]

I've decided to give the steps from this link a try:

http://justingale.com/2014/01/fix-contact-sync-problem-samsung-update/

Basically it says to use Application Manager to find the "Contacts Storage" app (NOT the Contacts App) and to then "Clear Data". This appears to do as claimed - it wipes ALL contacts stored on the device and I verified that by then launching the Contacts App and saw it was empty.  I then went and forced a Sync of my Gmail account details and sure enough my contacts appear to be there now.  I did an export to a VCF file and found that my phone had 375 contacts just like my Google account online at contacts.google.com.

I'm feeling like this is a solution, possibly addressing a corrupted data storage on the phone - now we'll just have to wait and see if this sticks.