The discrepancy you're experiencing in the number of contacts listed in the "All Contacts" section of your iPhone 12 Pro's Contacts app can be attributed to how contacts are organized and synced across different accounts.
When you have multiple accounts linked to your iPhone's Contacts app (such as Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and iCloud), the contacts from each account may not necessarily be duplicated or added to the "All Contacts" section. The way contacts are displayed and grouped can vary depending on the settings and synchronization options for each account.
Please see the pic below for more clarity on what is said till now.
Here are some reasons why the numbers may not add up:
- The Contacts app on your iPhone may group contacts based on the account they belong to. This means that you'll see separate sections for Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, and iCloud contacts within the app. The "All Contacts" section may only display contacts that are not associated with any specific account.
- These are contacts that you might have manually added to your iPhone's local storage (not associated with any particular email account).
- If you have a contact that appears in more than one account (e.g., the same contact exists in both Gmail and iCloud), it may appear in the "All Contacts" section as a unified entry, combining information from both accounts.
- As mentioned earlier, your iPhone can automatically merge contacts with similar information across different accounts to avoid duplicates. The merged contacts will be displayed in the "All Contacts" section as a single entry.
- Your iPhone allows you to choose which accounts to sync contacts with. You might have disabled contact syncing for some accounts, which would exclude those contacts from appearing in the "All Contacts" section.
- If you have contacts with similar names or information across multiple accounts, your iPhone might automatically merge them to avoid duplicates. In this case, you'll only see a single entry in the "All Contacts" section, even though it combines data from multiple accounts.
- Some contacts might have privacy settings that prevent them from being included in the "All Contacts" list. If a contact is marked as private, it won't appear in the "All Contacts" section.
- The Contacts app might also identify and remove duplicates or outdated contacts during synchronization, which could further contribute to the difference in numbers.
- However, if you choose the "Keep on iPhone" option specifically for contacts, the contacts that were synced from that account will not be deleted from your device. Instead, they will remain in the "All Contacts" section, which displays all contacts stored locally on your iPhone, including those not linked to any specific account.
- The contacts that were associated with the removed account will no longer receive updates or sync changes made to that account. They will function as local contacts, and any changes made to them will only affect the local copy on your iPhone.