How to force Contacts to respect "File as" (or "NickName") field for sorting and display? Let's say one wants for Android to display their father not as "FirstName LastName", but simply as "Dad". This seems to be a pretty essential feature; and, as I have heard, it is implemented even in an old systems such as Windows Mobile.

However, while Google Contacts offer the "File As" field (which does what I'm looking for), Android does not seem to respect this field: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=5724 , http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8578

The issues are pretty old; did anything changed since then? I cannot find any options to use the "File As" field on my Xperia P with Android 2.3.7 installed.

Are there any alternatives to the default "Contacts" application that make use of this field?
As of 2019, Google contacts respect the "file as" option. 
If you have contacts named as "FirstName LastName" and use "fileasname", the display name will be "fileasname". Also, you can search even by "FirstName" or "Lastname" or any of the entries made in google contacts. (Yeah even notes are searchable).