Hello, I have a Samsung Galaxy Y phone with gmail installed. I am able to access my account such as sent mail, compose, and inbox etc., but there is no contact folder. nor even a contacts icon anywhere. I have been on the internet and have followed every instruction found; with every SYNC enabled etc. but no contacts will appear on the phone. Are there any little nuances I should know about? Just how do I go about obtaining my gmail contacts onto my phone?

Do you have the google account setup on your phone with the all option for Contacts ticked it be in settings/ accounts/google/ sync contacts. You can have it sync on regular basis like 1 hour or manually sync when you want to update. At least that what I have on my Samsung Galaxy 3 most android phones i see are very similar.

I also have the Gmail app on my Galaxy and it too has no contacts folder, I think you will find that all your Gmail contacts are merged into the phones contacts. When you create a new message you will get a list of possibles as soon as you type in the "To" address field.