GTalks synchronization bug

While synchronizing Gtalk with Mobile device my friend Sandeep came across some serious bug. Here is the detailed explanation for same in his own words.

Actually I didn’t do very serious stuff… but response from GoogleTalk is certainly buggy. So here what I did.

I use universal address book, mobile, outlook and through gmail. Outlook and Gmail are synched manually but I used to sync mobile and Gmail via SyncML protocol but last week I decided to try active sync (which is supposed to be only for Windows Mobile but mine is supported).

I was aware from internet that calendar sync is still buggy so I backed up my phone data and then removed all Gmail contact and synced with mobile. First time worked perfectly but I did some changes and tried again, this time I was unable to see any contacts in Gmail, but when I switched to old version then I was able to see all contacts. Then I selected all and deleted and switched to newer version again and this time Gmail showed some serious error, generally there are few default group in Gmail which can not be deleted but I was not having them too and apart from that I was getting some serious error as Group “NULL” not found etc (and it was certainly not my browser issue, I used firefox as well and tried my other account also.

Anyways after messing all over again I managed to figure it out it has something to do with newer and older versions of Gmail, once switching to older and then back I could see all contacts. So problem from Gmail is solved temporarily.

Now GTalks default behavior is when you remove someone from GTalk you can still have that contact in Gmail but if you remove that from Gmail then will get removed from GTalk as well. Also suppose person A and B are friend on GTalk and person A removes person B and adds again, person B wont get any confirmation

as he is already authenticated as friend (and many times I used this trick to clean up my address book, back up Gmail and remove all and then restore Gmail, then only add those GTalk contact who you want to be in chat list, always worked) but perhaps this active sync issue or something version compatibility issue.

Default: when already approved friend is added, GTalk first shows contact name as invited in 2-3 seconds it fetches old info and then he is shown added to chat list

Now: When I add a person it shows invited (normal) and if its unable to authenticate then it should show me INVITED only but in 2-3 seconds contact gets deleted… and that’s why I can’t add anybody now :-S

If anyone faced similar issue and found solution for same please let me know.