maemo.org Bugzilla – Bug 6375
Provides SMS buttons for "Phone" entries and not only "Mobile" entries
Last modified: 2010-04-27 20:26:55 UTC
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
SOFTWARE VERSION: Nokia N900 Maemo5 Version:1.209.42-11.002 EXACT STEPS LEADING TO PROBLEM: Basically all contacts will have a send sms option for all phone numbers,\. EXPECTED OUTCOME: I'm not quite sure, but I would assume that only mobile numbers should have a send SMS button. ACTUAL OUTCOME: Every single phone number for a contact will have a send SMS button. REPRODUCIBILITY: always EXTRA SOFTWARE INSTALLED: none OTHER COMMENTS: not sure if it is necessary to have sms buttons for all phone numbers. but it definitely takes up a lot of screen realestate for contacts that have a lot of phone numbers. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091105 Fedora/3.5.5-1.fc11 Firefox/3.5.5
Thanks for reporting this. Idealistically speaking your totally right. However after checking here I must say that nearly all of my contacts that I have important from my SIM card (that was used in another mobile phone before) have been important as "Phone" and not "Mobile". Actually the numbers are quite mixed, both landline and mobile numbers. So it's probably a WONTFIX for convenience reasons - there's no way when importing those contacts from SIM cards (which is a quite common case I assume) for the Contacts application to realize whether it's a mobile or a landline number and hence it's the way it currently is. That's just my guess though.
(In reply to comment #0) > I'm not quite sure, but I would assume that only mobile numbers should have a > send SMS button. In the UK at least landline numbers can also accept SMS.
This doesn't just affect contacts imported from SIM card. they are new contacts entered manually. When I create a new contact select "Phone" then enter number, and then I select "Mobile" and enter a number... They will both have a "SMS" button... This also affects contacts imported from google sync (m.google.com)... (In reply to comment #1) > Thanks for reporting this. > > Idealistically speaking your totally right. > However after checking here I must say that nearly all of my contacts that I > have important from my SIM card (that was used in another mobile phone before) > have been important as "Phone" and not "Mobile". Actually the numbers are quite > mixed, both landline and mobile numbers. > > So it's probably a WONTFIX for convenience reasons - there's no way when > importing those contacts from SIM cards (which is a quite common case I assume) > for the Contacts application to realize whether it's a mobile or a landline > number and hence it's the way it currently is. > That's just my guess though. >
You can send a landline a SMS here (US), but I'm not sure what would happen to it. (In reply to comment #2) > (In reply to comment #0) > > I'm not quite sure, but I would assume that only mobile numbers should have a > > send SMS button. > > In the UK at least landline numbers can also accept SMS. >
Here they are delivered, see <http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=24181>. Also according to <http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+cmd+Sms> similar services operate in several other countries. So, since knowing that a number is "mobile" does not provide sufficient information to decide whether it can receive SMS, I would say the current behaviour is not a bug.
I don't want to go back and forth about this... I'm sure somebody somewhere will send a sms to a landline. However, I think it would be more common to send one to a 'mobile' phone. Is it absolutely necessary to have every single phone number in your contacts have a SMS button... (In reply to comment #5) > Here they are delivered, see > <http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=24181>. > Also according to <http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+cmd+Sms> > similar services operate in several other countries. > > So, since knowing that a number is "mobile" does not provide sufficient > information to decide whether it can receive SMS, I would say the current > behaviour is not a bug. >
I'd rather direct our thought to improving the UI design for contact cards, rather than disabling features that somebody might find useful.
This one has been discussed quite a bit internally, and there are different opinions on it. But basically the sms-button is always there, because we think it would be way more annoying if it were missing for a wrongly tagged number, then it is, if it the button present for numbers that cannot receive sms. Also, if I am not mistaken, in most countries it is quite easy to distinguish mobile numbers from landline numbers by looking at the number itself.
(In reply to comment #8) > Also, if I am not mistaken, in most countries it is quite easy to distinguish > mobile numbers from landline numbers by looking at the number itself. In most countries it is; in Czech Republic for example it's impossible. :-)
I wouldn't disable it, perhaps have an additional option for each number to indicate wether it has sms capability... Or perhaps, By default only display the SMS button for phones tagged with "Mobile", "Mobile (home/work/foo)"... Then add additional sms buttons for other numbers that the user explicitly sent an sms message to. You can explicity add a number to a sms via: Conversations -> New SMS -> To Select the contact(s) and the number.... At that point the any number you sent a sms to will have a button. (In reply to comment #7) > I'd rather direct our thought to improving the UI design for contact cards, > rather than disabling features that somebody might find useful.
Remember, no matter where you import your numbers from, you can still edit the contact to change the phone number type... when I imported/synced my contacts with google sync, I had to go and change some numbers that were tagged and "Mobile (Work)" to "Phone (work)". I'm not sure why that happened, but it was simple enough to correct it. (In reply to comment #8) > This one has been discussed quite a bit internally, and there are different > opinions on it. > But basically the sms-button is always there, because we think it would be way > more annoying if it were missing for a wrongly tagged number, then it is, if it > the button present for numbers that cannot receive sms. > Also, if I am not mistaken, in most countries it is quite easy to distinguish > mobile numbers from landline numbers by looking at the number itself.
(In reply to comment #11) > Remember, no matter where you import your numbers from, you can still edit the > contact to change the phone number type... when I imported/synced my contacts > with google sync, I had to go and change some numbers that were tagged and > "Mobile (Work)" to "Phone (work)". I'm not sure why that happened, but it was > simple enough to correct it. Yes, you can, but nobody wants to do that. Maybe it is acceptable for a one or two contacts, but not for a large set of contacts. And the risk is that import from sim, synchronization with other phones or outlook, etc. will result in a large set of wrongly tagged phone-numbers. I am reopening this bug, because I agree with you, that the current behavior is not perfect. But just changing the behavior as suggested here is not an option, because it will for sure irritate a lot of people. We will discuss this further internally with our UI experts, and see if we can come up with a better solution, that will be acceptable by everyone.
What did you think about comment #10? (In reply to comment #12) > (In reply to comment #11) > > Remember, no matter where you import your numbers from, you can still edit the > > contact to change the phone number type... when I imported/synced my contacts > > with google sync, I had to go and change some numbers that were tagged and > > "Mobile (Work)" to "Phone (work)". I'm not sure why that happened, but it was > > simple enough to correct it. > Yes, you can, but nobody wants to do that. Maybe it is acceptable for a one or > two contacts, but not for a large set of contacts. And the risk is that import > from sim, synchronization with other phones or outlook, etc. will result in a > large set of wrongly tagged phone-numbers. > I am reopening this bug, because I agree with you, that the current behavior is > not perfect. But just changing the behavior as suggested here is not an option, > because it will for sure irritate a lot of people. > We will discuss this further internally with our UI experts, and see if we can > come up with a better solution, that will be acceptable by everyone.
clmntch: Can you please strip unneeded quoting and if you quote comment below the quoted text? Makes it easier to read. Thanks a lot in advance. :)
(In reply to comment #14) I'm sorry, I can do that...
How about just adding a checkbox next to a number whether it is SMS-able or not? Then just default it to checked and people can uncheck numbers that can't receive SMSs. Probably half the numbers in my phone can't receive SMS...
*** Bug 6728 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
another solution could be to make it possible to manually delete the sms field.
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
(In reply to comment #1) > So it's probably a WONTFIX for convenience reasons - there's no way when > importing those contacts from SIM cards (which is a quite common case I assume) > for the Contacts application to realize whether it's a mobile or a landline > number and hence it's the way it currently is. > That's just my guess though. > On Nokia phones it's possible - and has been for some time - to assign multiple phone numbers to a contact. I've done this in my N85 - contacts have Mobile numbers, Phone (Home), Phone (Work) etc. and I've just transferred my contacts to the N900 over Bluetooth, it all worked perfectly. So now I have my contacts with their various phone numbers, and of course each phone number has a blasted SMS button even when sending an SMS to the respective number is completely impossible. So please, do not show SMS except for mobile phone numbers, or give the user the option to hide the SMS button for non-mobile phone numbers. In addition, when starting a new Conversation and selecting the "To" recipient it shouldn't be necessary to list for me all the phone numbers assigned to a contact when only one of the available numbers (the mobile phone number) is capable of receiving SMS (when only one SMS capable number is available use it by default - don't ask me). I'm having to make this choice every time I want to send an SMS simply because somewhere in the world a land line can receive an SMS text, what a pain! :) These simple changes would make the overall experience that bit slicker. I can understand that there might be issues when importing numbers from a SIM card whereby the numbers are not correctly categorised but that should be an issue for the "import" process or can be overcome with a simple option (treat all numbers as SMS capable etc.) or even by the user manually re-assigning their numbers into the correct category (mobile phone, phone work, phone home etc.). And to cater for the rare occasion when a non-mobile phone will be the recipient of an SMS it should be possible to flag specific numbers as being SMS capable (the default being "true" for mobile and "false" for non-mobile) and have this flag honoured by the SMS button (and the Conversation app when filtering recipients) (In reply to comment #2) > > In the UK at least landline numbers can also accept SMS. > Yes, and no doubt elsewhere in the world too but I would suggest that this is the exception rather than the rule. It seems a shame to spam every phone number with the SMS option when for most non-mobile numbers the SMS option is invalid. This lack of differentation between SMS-capable and SMS-incapable numbers is also a problem for other parts of the system, ie. Conversation. A way to enable SMS for specific numbers would be ideal, as per the above suggestion.
I ran into this myself. It looks rather odd to see an option to send an SMS to my voicemail number. :) I do understand the usability concern about not wanting to hide the SMS option just because a phone number has no specified type. However, it seems reasonable to add a new type to explicitly identify POTS phones. (No idea what to call it; "landline" doesn't seem very friendly, nor does "non-mobile".) Or, alternatively, just offer an "SMS-capable" checkbox for each number, checked by default.
Or perhaps click and hold the SMS button for a couple seconds and put up a "non-SMS number" dialog which allows you to remove SMS button.
The thing is I have hundreds of numbers in my contacts list, all carefully categorised Mobile/Phone(Work)/Phone(Home) etc. Assuming something to distinguish between SMS capable and SMS incapable is ever implemented there must be a way to quickly and efficiently apply the flag retrospectively so that I don't have to go through two thirds of my phone numbers removing the SMS option! Perhaps PC Suite (once it is supported) could be used for these mass updates assuming the SMS-capable flag can be exported and re-imported. Alternatively, a simple "global" contacts option of "SMS-Capable -> [ Only Mobile numbers ] / [ All numbers ]" would work, with individual overrides on a per number basis - this would be my preference.
This option is currently under discussion internally. I.e. add a option whether or not to show a sms-option for anything but "mobile" numers. So that users can activate that option if they they have correctly tagged set up numbers, or dont bother to "fix" the tagging. Not promissing that it gets implemented, just wanted to give you some feedback. (i.e. there is *a lot of* user feedback on the N900, and we of course need to make sure we prioritize the most critcial issues)
Nearly _all_ landlines in Spain can receive and send short messages (at least city ones), and 40% of my POTS contacts have the hardware to do so. Up so far I've sent more short messages to "Phone" entries than anything else (including Mobile). So please offer a global or per contact checkbox, but don't try to guess anything automatically.
(In reply to comment #25) > Nearly _all_ landlines in Spain can receive and send short messages (at least > city ones), and 40% of my POTS contacts have the hardware to do so. Up so far > I've sent more short messages to "Phone" entries than anything else (including > Mobile). > > So please offer a global or per contact checkbox, but don't try to guess > anything automatically. > This issue has been discussed and IF we find time to address this issue, most likely we will offer a gobal checkbox. Everything else is too error prone, or too risky in terms of regressions.
(In reply to comment #16) > How about just adding a checkbox next to a number whether it is SMS-able or > not? Then just default it to checked and people can uncheck numbers that can't > receive SMSs. Probably half the numbers in my phone can't receive SMS... > (In reply to comment #22) > Or perhaps click and hold the SMS button for a couple seconds and put up a > "non-SMS number" dialog which allows you to remove SMS button. > This is a good idea, how do we go about getting this functionality included. A check box or a long press to open an option would be great, do we take this over to brainstorm now?
Why not make it just one button that defaults to the current mobile number entered, and it could have a small down-pointing arrow on the right side, and when you press it, it acts like a drop down menu where you can select which number to send to. Once this is done, that could be the default number to show in the box. This way its super easy to send to somebodys default sms-number, and still very easy to send to the same persons landline phone if you want.
(In reply to comment #26) > This issue has been discussed and IF we find time to address this issue, most > likely we will offer a gobal checkbox. Everything else is too error prone, or > too risky in terms of regressions. This implementation is coming. Setting target milestone to 5.0+
*** Bug 9536 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
The next public update ("PR1.2") will provide a checkbox in Contacts > Settings: [ ] Display SMS only for Mobile numbers Hence closing as FIXED for PR1.2. To answer popular followup questions: * Nokia does not announce release dates of public updates in advance. * There is currently no access to these internal, non-public build versions. A Brainstorm proposal to change this exists at http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/undelayed_bugfix_releases_for_nokia_open_source_packages-002/