How BlackBerry 10 Links Contacts Based on Certain Information

 BlackBerry 10 Contacts BlackBerry 10 Contacts2

BlackBerry has finally revealed how the logic works for contact linking on BlackBerry 10. In case you didn’t notice BlackBerry 10 links multiple contacts from different sources into a single contact so that you do not have duplicates. PIM is one of the main things BlackBerry OS 10.2.1 is focusing on but until then its nice to understand how it works. BlackBerry has thankfully given a bit of an explanation in their knowledgebase which I wanted to share.

Essentially BlackBerry 10 combines contacts as long as they come from different source accounts including Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, CardDAV, Local Contacts, and SIM Card into one unified contact. The logic is based on matching the contacts by:

  • First and Last name
  • Email address
  • Social networking profile (for example, same LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook profile
  • Mobile Phone number
  • PIN

They do point out that contacts from the same account source (say contacts in your same Gmail account with the same name) will not automatically be linked. BlackBerry goes on to explain that:

Contacts who share the same account source, however, are not automatically linked. For example, if a single CardDAV account has two contacts who share the same first and last name of Justin Jones, these contacts will not be automatically linked. A consequence of this behaviour is that any contact created on the smartphone will not automatically link with any existing contacts in writable sources. This will also result in contacts which are created on the smartphone being written to all writable accounts.

The Mobile Phone number is used as linking criteria due to the fact that it is more unique. Other types of phone numbers are not used for linking due to them often being shared between multiple people (for example, a home phone number).

Any contact that has been manually linked or unlinked at some point becomes ineligible for automatic linking. This helps prevent undoing any link corrections made by the user.

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