A mobile terminal and a method for managing various phone book data of the mobile terminal are disclosed. A file name of a photo received from the external source or a captured photo are compared with the phone book information and automatically stored in the phone book, thereby minimizing the user manipulation and the process of storing the photo data of the phone book. Also, when a photo of a particular user is selected, a phone book photo is requested from a corresponding user according to a certain requesting method, and when the phone book photo is received from the counterpart user, the corresponding photo is added or updated as a phone book photo, thus improving user convenience.