Google's rolling out several improvements to CardDAV, its open standard for accessing contact data, today. The most noticeable change is the new support for high-resolution contact photos, meaning some (mainly non-Android) mobile devices won't be limited to 96-by-96 pixel images anymore. It's worth remembering that if you're using Gmail sync on an Android phone, you shouldn't be affected by this anyway, as your stuff is synced through pure Google cloud magic.
The other changes are all about making CardDAV a faster, better experience —
- Sync-Collections, which improves battery life for mobile users by reducing the amount of data exchanged.
- POST support, which reduces mobile data usage when creating new contacts.
- For Google Apps users, searching the domain’s Global Address List.
CardDAV users don't need to do anything, and the new features should be available within iOS 7 from today. As we said before, this isn't a huge deal for most Android users, but the changes are welcome nonetheless.
Source: Google Developers
