Contacts with similar phone number mix together
asked 2017-06-01 07:42:14 +0200
I have two contacts with belong to the 5 people I call and SMS most, and their numbers are almost the same except second number, i.e xAxxxxxxxx and xBxxxxxxxx. One another person I know has problems with Jolla Phone with these same contacts with exactly same symptoms. Long time ago I did send a SMS to both of them creating a conversation, and sometimes SMS sent to one of them did go to both of them - maybe because I was responding to the group conversation. I could make sure the message went to right person by creating a new message instead of replying to previous message.
The contacts are not linked to anything (even though I sync my contacts via CardDav to Nextcloud, the other person with same problem doesn't)
Since update to Iijoki (2.1.0.11) this has become much worse. Now even calls do get mixed up, so when I call to B I usually end up calling A, and I cant recall having any SMS delivered to B - they go always to A, sometimes twice. On incoming calls I feel as the phone shows number correctly, but while calling back to missed call i get most of time only to A. I think this has been the situation since upgrade, although haven't been calling them after update except recently.
This is related to https://together.jolla.com/question/69821/messages-show-multiple-contacts-in-a-single-conversation/?answer=161477#post-id-161477 but now it is no more about SMS only.
EDIT 2018-04-04 Finally had time to dig a bit further, and it seems that in contacts.db in addition to the real full-length phone number is stored also normalizedNumber, which is the last 8 digits. In this case the normalizedNumber is the same for all of these numbers, as the difference is on the first truncated digit. The same behaviour has been noticed also on a Xperia X, so definitely it's not device specific.
I don't know whether there are better options than a) use last 9 digits (which could include country code or part of it in some cases) b) strip only either -the leading zero (in case number starts with single zero, i.e. no country code) -the country code (in case the first character is + or 00) The latter is obviously a bit more work, but if I understood correctly it should be doable by comparing the beginning to the list of country codes. At the first one obviously if the normalizedNumber would include part of country code it wouldn't join together numbers with and without it.
In total I'm happy I do not have foreign contacts - it's quite easy to imagine the problems raising if I'd have contacts in different countries that share the number except country code. That would be not only annoying but also expensive if I'd end up sending messages or calling to abroad.
I have replaced the 8-digit normalizedNumbers with 9-digit ones, hopefully this could be a workaround.
I have this same problem, one contact starts with 0500 xxxx and another with 0400 xxxx and those get mixed in my Jolla. BUT problem is not only in Jolla phones, also in Android at least. Those both numbers belongs to same family, dad (my boss) and his son so you really have to be careful how to answer or what kind of messages to send... :) So this problem is not so unusual.
japsi ( 2017-06-01 08:27:49 +0200 )editadding country code won't help ?
pawel ( 2017-06-01 09:10:38 +0200 )edit@pawel, I don't think it will help because the classification is done via the LSB's of the phone number.
And as @japsi says, it's also present in Android phones... Actually I do remember coming across that kind of behaviour with my wife's Symbian phone too and that was what, 8 years ago or something.
I suppose every phone nowdays works like this.
juiceme ( 2017-06-01 09:30:37 +0200 )editCountry code on both, either or neither contact does not effect at all. During past decades I can't remember hearing about this kind of problem on anyone I know (mostly Symbians, a few Windows Phones and Androids, of which probably Galaxy S3 is newest).
kklie ( 2017-06-01 10:42:16 +0200 )edit