Google Contacts

Google Contacts is Google's contact management tool that is available in its free email service Gmail, as a standalone service, and as a part of Google's business-oriented suite of web apps Google Apps.

Features
On 10 August 2010, Google released an updated look for Google Contacts. The update truly integrated Google Contacts with the rest of Gmail. The new features of this update included the following: The older version of the Google Contacts user interface was removed, making many users unhappy.
 * Keyboard shortcuts
 * Last name sorting
 * Custom labels
 * Undo
 * Automatic saving
 * Structured name fields
 * More prominent notes field

Google Contacts can be synchronized with mobile devices and operating systems (e.g., Android, Symbian, iOS, BlackBerry, Palm, Pocket PC), Windows Phone or with PC applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird) via third party software, and Google's own Google Sync app. In addition, any system that can sync via Microsoft's ActiveSync can sync with Google Contacts. There is also support for mobile devices that support the Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync® protocol and/or the SyncML standard. There is built-in support for Google Contacts in Google's open-source mobile operating system Google Android. Google Contacts can be synchronized also by CardDAV.

Criticism

 * With introduction of higher-density screens and larger internal memories to Android devices Google Contacts were criticized for supporting only low resolution of photos with size limited by 96x96 pixels. This issue was addressed after a long wait of Android Users on October 10, 2012 on devices with Jelly Bean to a higher limit of 720x720 pixels. Although it is reported that Google Apps users still haven't received the update yet.


 * There are criticisms of the new Google Voice contacts lay out, as evidenced by the complaints of many users on this Google Forum thread