Google is changing how user accounts sync contacts with Android phones, and the end results might confuse some users unless they know what they're dealing with and are aware of this change. They might find their Contacts lists empty, but thankfully, it's not as drastic of a change or issue as it may seem.
Up until the latest Google Play Services version (v23.20), contacts saved on a Google account and synced with an Android phone would stay stored on the phone even after the user disabled contact syncing in the Google account option on their Android device. In other words, if a user had their contacts stored on their Google account, they could enable contact syncing on their Android phone, wait for the contacts to be synced with the device, then disable syncing, and the contacts would still be shown on your device.
However, this new Google Play Services version changes the syncing method to where contacts disappear from the Android phone as soon as contact syncing is disabled from the phone. Contacts stored on the Google account, however, won't be deleted or changed in any way.
Contacts will not be permanently deleted
Potentially, seeing their contacts disappear from their phones could create some confusion and might cause some users to believe that they permanently lost their contact list. Thankfully, contacts should still be present on their Google account (if that's where they were saved in the first place), and reenabling the contact syncing option will add the contacts to their Android devices again.
In short, moving forward, if you store your contacts on your Google account, disabling contact syncing in the Google account settings on your Android device will cause those contacts to disappear from your phone. But reenabling contact syncing will bring them back.
In theory, this change to Google Play Services should also apply to Galaxy smartphone and tablet users. Samsung customers can sync their phone contacts with their Samsung accounts for safekeeping. But unless contacts are stored on the phone or SIM, disabling Google account contact syncing would still make contacts stored on the Google account disappear from the phone until the contact syncing option is reenabled. And that is regardless of whether Samsung account contact syncing is turned ON or OFF.
If you want to make sure you have contact syncing enabled on your Google account connected to your Galaxy phone, open the Settings app on the device, go to “Accounts and backup,” tap “Manage accounts,” select your Google account, then go to “Sync account” and make sure the “Contacts” toggle is set to the ON position.
