Merging duplicate contacts - is my phone broken? I just got my Samsung Galaxy S3 (Android 4.1.1) and I'm having the usual trouble with ridiculous amounts of duplicate contacts. I've tried the following methods to no avail:


My mom told me to go to Contacts, and click "Merge with Google" in the menu. It had me add a Google account and was able to remove some of the duplicates, but many still have 5-6 for a single contact. My mom said the whole thing would be ruined if I repeated the process.
I've been checking online, and I found similar questions here where the answer boils down to clicking "Find &amp; Merge Duplicates..." on contacts.google.com. I tried it, and it claimed to merge four contacts. I still have many duplicates.
I tried to manually join some contacts a couple of ways:


Go to Contacts, click the contact to open more details, click the link icon under the Connection heading, tap "Join another contact," select another contact
Go to Contacts, click the contact to open more details, open the menu, select "Join contact," select another contact
Go to Contact, press and hold the contact, select "Join contact," select another contact
Go to Contacts, click the contact to open more details, open the menu, select "Edit," click the menu key


For the first three methods, the phone flashed a message that said "Contacts joined." The contacts were not joined. The last one would not allow me to open the menu.


Is there another method that I'm supposed to use to merge my contacts? Did I do one of the above methods wrong?

I worry that my beautiful new phone is broken because joining contacts didn't work and it refuses to sync contacts with my google account :(
You could perhaps try the same method from within the Gmail interface.


From within Gmail, navigate to contacts.
From the menu More, click on Find &amp; Merge Duplicates.