Is there a way to edit contacts birthdays on the phone?

As far as I can tell the default contacts app on the phone does not have a field to enter or edit birthdays.

Is there a way to do this?

What about other contact apps?

Answer

On Android 4.4.2 one can edit the Contact, and if the birthday is not showing at all, scroll to the bottom and tap on the "Add another field" button, add a tick mark to "Events", then tap "OK". The default event field shown will be "Birthday". If you tap on the event type tag, it can be set to "Birthday", "Anniversary", "Other", or "Custom", where "Custom" can be edited to display an arbitrary string. As of this writing, Google Contacts in one's Web browser only recognizes dates in the forms "MM/DD/YY", e.g., "12/24/72", or "MMMM DD, YYYY", e.g., "December 24, 1972". It flags other formats as invalid, such as ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD). This can cause problems if contacts are imported from other sources that recognize ISO 8601. Fortunately, if you enter the date on the Android side, it is constrained to the proper format by the "Set date" selector window and it also gives one the option to enter just the month and day if the year is unknown or irrelevant.

Multiple events can be created for a Contact entry. In a test, I tapped the "+" repeatedly and in addition to "Birthday", created "Anniversary" and over 250 "Other" fields, but the Contact app never issued a warning that a limit been exceeded.