Contacts lost after update to IOS5 (iPhone)

Yesterday I decided to (finally) upgrade to IOS 5. This new firmware for the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad adds a lot of new features, including iCloud, iMessage and more.

At first the upgrade seemed to be a huge success, everything worked and I loved the fact that all my apps were being updated runtime, all at once. But then I realized that all my contacts were gone! I could see all the names in the ‘missed calls’ section, but it said “No contacts” when calling/texting. I tried the “Recovery” option, but nothing seemed to help…

Until I tried this:

• Go to Settings
• iCloud
• Disable ‘Contacts’ (slide)
• At this moment, all the contacts on my phone appeared again!
• Re-enable ‘Contacts’
• Now iCloud asks if you want to combine the results, yes we do!

This restored all my contacts and synchronized them with iCloud. It seems that (for some reason) the initial merge with iCloud failed or something.
If you have this problem too, please let me know if this fix helps.