Many Xiaomi smartphone users are faced with a situation where the phone book is full of old records that are stored directly on the chip of the operator. SIM-The card has a very limited amount of memory and often does not support displaying Cyrillic names, turning important numbers into faceless numbers.
In the Android operating system, and in particular in the MIUI shell, record management is divided into several levels. You can delete numbers one by one, in groups or completely clear the SIM card storage by previously saving important data in your Google or Mi Cloud account. Below we will discuss in detail all available methods so that you can choose the most suitable for your situation.
It’s worth noting that the interface of the Contacts app may vary slightly depending on the firmware version. However, the logic remains the same for all models, whether it’s a budget Redmi or a flagship Xiaomi.
Preparation for cleaning and backup
Before embarking on radical deletion measures, you need to protect yourself from losing important data. SIM-The card is considered an archaic method, because if the chip is damaged or lost, the entire phone book will be lost irretrievably.
First, make sure your numbers are saved to your Google account. To do this, open the Contacts app, go to the settings and select Import/Export. If you see the Export to Google account option, it means that some of your records are still in your phone's memory or on the SIM. The most secure storage method is synchronization with a Google account, which allows you to restore numbers to any new device instantly.
It's also worth checking if sync with Mi Cloud is enabled. Xiaomi smartphone owners often use this service by default.If you plan to delete contacts en masse, make sure you have a fresh copy that can be deployed back in case of an error.
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Before removing all contact with SIM-Make a full export to the file.vcf via the Import/Export menu and save it to the cloud storage or send it to the messenger.
Delete contacts one by one through the phone application
The easiest way to get rid of an unnecessary record is to manually delete it, which is a good method if you need to remove a few specific numbers that take up space on your SIM card. Open the standard Contacts or Phone app on your Xiaomi.
Find the contact you want in the list. Please note that the name may be a storage source, such as "SIM" or operator name. Click on the name to open the subscriber card. In the upper right corner of the screen, you will see a menu icon (three dots or a vertical tripoint).
If you want to delete multiple entries in a row, it's more convenient to use the mode (multi-select). In the contact list, press and hold your finger on the first contact to be deleted until it stands out. Then just touch the remaining numbers to be removed. After selecting the group, click the "Delete" button (usually the basket icon) and confirm the action.
☑️ Pre-deletion check
Massive removal of all contacts with SIM-map
If your goal is to completely clear the SIM card memory, for example, before selling a number or transferring all data to the cloud, it is more convenient to use the SIM contact management function.
Go to the Contacts app and click on the menu icon (three bars or dots). Select Settings, then find Contacts on SIM-map" or "Contact management SIM». In some versions MIUI This path may look like settings. → Import/export of contacts → Delete contacts with SIM-map.
In the list that opens, you'll see all the numbers stored on the chip, and you'll see the "Select All" feature, activate this switch to highlight the entire SIM card phone book, then click the "Delete" button or the basket icon, and the system will alert you that the action is irreversible.
⚠️ Note: Removal of contacts with SIM-The card does not affect copies stored in the phone memory or the cloud if they were previously synced.
The cleaning process takes a few seconds, and once completed, the SIM card's contact list will be empty, freeing up space and speeding up the phone's caller search.
Eliminating Duplicate Contacts on Xiaomi
A common problem when transferring data or changing SIM cards is the appearance of duplicates. The same number can be written several times: once on the SIM card, another in the phone's memory, a third in Google, which creates confusion and clutters the interface.
Xiaomi smartphones have a built-in take-up-combination feature. Go to Contacts, click on the settings menu, and select “Clean Duplicates” (or “Combine Repeated Contacts”). The system will automatically scan the database and suggest combining records with the same numbers or names.
You can choose to automatically combine all the pairs you find, or you can manually navigate the list, controlling the process, which is especially useful if you have a Mom contact on the SIM and a Mom (home) contact on your phone, and the system will offer to combine them into one card with two numbers.
For advanced users, access to contacts through the Google Contacts web interface works even more efficiently, finding similar names and numbers that may have eluded the phone’s algorithms.
Why do duplicates appear?
Transferring SIM contacts to phone memory and cloud
Before you delete contacts from a SIM card, they often need to be moved to a more reliable storage, the memory of the phone or cloud account allows you to store not only the number, but also photos, email, address and social networks of the subscriber, which is impossible to do on an old SIM.
To transfer, open “Contacts”, go to “Settings» → «Import/export contacts. Select the option “Import with” SIM-The system will ask where to save the data: choose your Google account or your phone.
After successful import, make sure that all the numbers appear in the general phone book, and only after making sure that the data is safe, you can proceed to delete the originals from the SIM card using the methods described above, which ensures that you will not be left without communication.
| Parameter | SIM-map | Google Account | Phone memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Memory capacity | Very small (250-500 contacts) | Unlimited. | Depends on free memory. |
| Supplementary fields | Name and number only | Photo, email, address, notes | Photos, address, notes |
| Synchronization | Absent. | Automatic. | Only on this device. |
| Security | Low (risk of card loss) | High (recovery from any device) | Medium (depending on the backup) |
Decision and work with groups
Sometimes users are faced with contacts not being deleted or the delete button is inactive, which may be due to app access rights or synchronization errors, in which case try restarting your Xiaomi smartphone and repeating the operation.
Also worth mentioning is working with groups. If you've created contact groups (e.g., Family, Work) and saved them to a SIM card, when you delete contacts, groups can break up, and it's recommended that you export the groups first, clear the SIM card, and then import the data back, distributing it to new groups already in the phone's memory.
In some cases, especially on older versions of Android, SIM contacts may have been encoded that is not correctly displayed on the new device (crackers instead of letters), deleting such contacts and re-write in the correct format (UTF-8 via Google) solves the problem of displaying names.
⚠️ Note: If you are using a corporate SIM-card, make sure it doesn't have any important service numbers before you clean it completely.
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The optimal strategy is to store all contacts in a Google account, and use the SIM card exclusively for identification in the operator’s network, keeping its memory empty.