Android App Review: HaxSync

Turned on your Samsung Galaxy Nexus or Ice Cream Sandwich device and you were a bit upset to find that when you installed the Facebook app, it didn’t sync your contacts? According to the rumors, Google and Facebook aren’t getting along in regards to their sharing of data with one another and that is why the syncing doesn’t work. Dumb, we agree, but what can you do when giants fight?

So now, regardless of the reasoning behind the issues, you just want it to work. Well, thanks to developer Mathias Roth and the new app HaxSync, you can sync your Facebook contacts regardless of how much Google and Facebook don’t want you to. Here’s our review.

As we mentioned, Ice Cream Sandwich seems to be missing the functionality to sync your Facebook contacts’ photos, updates, etc. (but has the ability to sync with Google+ no problem). No matter how much you use Google+ though, you most likely still use Facebook and miss this functionality that is inherent in most other Android devices. This app, HaxSync, fills the gap and adds back in the functionality that was taken out. Best of all, it works without the need for root access, and works on all ROMs, and all versions of Android 4.0 and higher.1. To get it to work, turn on Wifi first and connect to a Wifi network (it’s much faster this way)2. Then you simply head to the Market on your device and download the official Facebook app for Android first, then look for HaxSync and install that after.

3. Once both are installed, head to your Settings > Accounts and Sync > Add Account and choose HaxSync.

4. Authorize the app by logging into Facebook.

5. Then select Sync contacts and wait. It tends to take a while for the first sync, so be patient.

Once it is done, you should be able to see all of your contacts’ profile pics and latest status updates. You can then select menu, then Contacts to Display and select Customize to hide some of the ones that aren’t normally in your My Contacts (or leave it as is and it will display all of your Facebook contacts instead).

When I used it, it did a pretty good job of finding all of my contacts and linking them automatically, but I’d recommend having your friends’ first and last name saved before syncing to help it identify who is who.

1. It did, however, miss a few, but to fix it, you simply have to click on the contact

2. Click menu > Edit > Join and select the corresponding facebook contact to link them together.

You will have to do this one by one, unfortunately, but, to be honest, that could easily be an issue with the official Facebook sync anyway so not a big problem.

On the plus side, all the images that were synced, were my contacts’ latest profile pics and were also downloaded as high res so they look great on the larger Galaxy Nexus screen. In addition to downloading profile pictures, the status updates were synced for people as well, not all people, but most. The reasoning behind this is that it most likely only syncs status updates that have been posted within a certain amount of time (i.e. past 2 days, etc.) in the past so don’t worry if you’re missing status updates, when your friends’ post more recently, they should show up.

The downside of this is app is that because it does download the high res images etc. and automatically sync, it can boost your data usage if your friends are like mine and like to change their profile pics on the hour every hour. Perhaps if the developer added a “only sync photos when connected to WiFi” option in the settings this would save you a bit of overages. In the meantime, keep track of your data usage and turn off the sync options for HaxSync if you’re getting close.

All in all, this is a great app to subsidize the lack of this feature in the new version of Android, and for $0.99 it’s worth it.

Here’s the Android Market link to download the app.