Can't add contacts to iPhone 3G

Question

Hi. I have an iPhone 3G and have a problem when trying to add a new contact. If I receive a call from a new number and want to create a contact i press the "add to new contact" button and then type in the persons name and save it as normal.
However the new contact does not appear in my contacts list. the only way it can be found is if use the iPhone search facility to look for the contact's name. If I create a new contact from scratch it works it's just the "add to new contact' that doesn't work.
Can anyone help??? Thanks

Answer 1

I have the same problem. 4.5 hours total across two mobile me chat support sessions have not found a solution.
The problem is the iPhone is saving contacts when created outside the Contacts App locally on the phone, and not within the MobileMe group.
I previously had Mobile Me (personal) and Exchange (work) on my phone. New contacts were never saving to either group, but would remain only local on the phone. MobileMe tech support suggested removing the Exchange account on my phone. They said that when creating a new contact the phone didn't know if it should be saved to MobileMe or Exchange, so it always defaulted to the local address book (thus never synced to the cloud). Upon removing my Exchange account, contacts created within the Contacts iPhone app will save to MobileMe and sync perfectly. Unfortunately, when outside the Contacts app (MMS, recent call log, website, email, etc), creating a new contact will still only save locally on the phone. Since MobileMe is the only contact account, the Contacts app will only show contacts within that group (not those that are local on the phone).
MobileMe support had no recommendation on how to fix this except for deleting my MobileMe account on the phone and trying to recreate. The problem seems to be the previous existence of the Exchange account and the iPhone thinking that group still exists somewhere, so by default, new contacts are still being created in the local phone group and not on MobileMe.
I hope someone has some solution to this big problem.