Contacts: Allow special characters (space, dash, etc) and text in phone numbers for readability [duplicate]
asked 2014-02-07 04:58:45 +0300
I have a number of contacts that have survived from my old Sony-Ericsson p800. One feature of the contacts app in that phone was the ability to write whatever you liked in the phone number. So instead of numbers like (number is fake):
+467347292123
you could write something like:
+46 (734) 72-92-123 (Parents home)
Much easier to read and understand! The phone app would simply ignore all characters, except +, 0-9, *, # and p. Any 'p' that occurred after the number has no effect, so that doesn't matter anyway. The ability to write free-form text in the number helps a lot to remember what is what for people with many numbers. It isn't uncommon to have more than one personal mobile, or several home numbers!
There used to be a Nokia phone, where the labels themselves could be altered (i.e. the work/home/mobile labels). Unfortunately, that information was lost when those contacts were imported to other phones, since the labels were non-standard, so I don't recommend that solution. However, simply having some free-form text in addition to the phone number has survived through all my phones since the Sony-Ericsson p800 (which some would argue is the first real smartphone!)
[Edit, Clarification]: The contacts app already allows importing contacts that have full free-form text in the number fields (just like all other contact apps I have used), and those contacts can be used to dial without problems. This is about allowing users to enter new numbers with text, and edit the ones that are already there, i.e.: To have some way to enable full keyboard when editing a phone number.
Yes, that's definitely needed (at least spaces). No matter how to do it, it works fine on other phones and should with the Jolla, too. Thanks!
Deonith ( 2014-02-07 13:26:13 +0300 )editAbsolutely a duplicate of https://together.jolla.com/question/19062/let-me-type-dashes-and-spaces-when-editing-the-phone-number-in-people/ Please cast your votes on that instead
Tanghus ( 2014-02-08 20:55:16 +0300 )editNot quite the same. https://together.jolla.com/question/19062/let-me-type-dashes-and-spaces-when-editing-the-phone-number-in-people/ asks for visible separators only, while this here asks additionally for textual comments inside the number field.
Stefanix ( 2014-02-09 04:08:23 +0300 )editFor that you could use e.g. Apples (non-standard)
Tanghus ( 2014-02-09 04:29:31 +0300 )editAB-Label. Adding text in a phone number is ludicrous.I acknowledge that it is useful to be able to distinguish different phone numbers of a contact beyond predefined labels. I tried to paste "1234ABC" into a phone number field of a Lumia (WP8). It was possible and only 1234 was dialled. Seems to work. Still, I think that's not the purpose of this field and I am not sure if this will lead to some problems with some apps or backup storage.
Stefanix ( 2014-02-09 08:43:35 +0300 )edit