Merge + APK for Android

It's entirely too easy to end up with multiple contacts for the same people on your smartphone, and a huge pain to go through them all and weed out the discards. It's worse when up-to-date data is spread over more than one saved contact. Merge+ for Android is a free app that can find and merge multiple contacts on your Android phone or tablet. With a super-easy, three-step process, Merge+ makes it easy to merge and update redundant contacts across multiple apps, accounts, and archives. Merge+ is compatible with Android 2.3.3 and above; we tried it in a Samsung phone running Android 4.1.1.

We downloaded and opened Merge+ and pressed one of its two buttons; the one labeled Find duplicates (the other downloads another of the developer's apps). Merge+ recommends backing up your contacts before activating the merge tool, and also reviewing all your choices before finalizing them. We actually had a different problem: The phone we ran Merge+ on was so new that we didn't have any duplicate contacts for Merge+ to find, let alone work its magic on. That didn't take too long to "fix" by adding some duplicates on our own (if "fix" is the right word!) and the next time we tapped Find duplicates, the app returned our recently-added duplicates, which it displayed in a list view. Merge+ doesn't make any changes until you've reviewed them to prevent you from merging the wrong contacts (Junior with Senior, for example). We reviewed and approved the changes and pressed Merge. Merge+ displayed a progress bar in the notification area. When it finished, we tapped Contacts and opened our main list. Duplicate entries were gone.

This easy-to-use app did a fine job sorting out multiple entries on our Android device. It's actually designed to work with the developer's other app, Contacts+, which offers many more ways to manage your contacts. But you don't need it to use Merge+. If duplicate contacts drive you crazy, do yourself a favor and run Merge+.