Phone app: Wrong number is shown in call history

[Wenfang Si]

arale, r180, ubuntu-touch/vivid-proposed

Steps
1. Launch dialer-app
2. Input number a Chinese phone number, e.g. 18812345678, and dial
3. End the call
4. Review in call history
=>
The number is displayed as [phone]

Expected:
1) number should be complete whithout missing the leading "1"
2) format should be like 188-1234-5678, or just 18812345678

<https://goo.gl/xeNKAV>: "An international phone number should be presented following the E.123 format, while a domestic phone number should be presented following the national format for the country that the phone was in at the time."

[Wenfang Si (wenfang.si)]

More info:
If I change my display language to Chinese, the number is displayed correctly: 188 1234 5678
(screenshot: http://people.canonical.com/~wsi/1447504-callHistory_wrongNumber/callHistory_setChineseLanguage.png)

But anyway the number should also be displayed correctly even if not set Chinese Language.

[Renato Araujo Oliveira Filho (renatofilho)]

Today we consider the language as the indicator of which format to use in phone number. This is not the best approach we should have a option on system settings to select the device "Regional format" as we have on desktop.

[Olga Kemmet (olga-kemmet)]

This is not only affecting number formatting but also time, currency and in general the metric systems.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's a duplicate of bug #1248349 for settings, closing as invalid because duplicating would mean closing the other component part as well

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

In System Settings we refer to the locale setting as "Display language", because that is 99% of its visible effect, and because calling it anything that didn't use the word "language" (e.g. "Regional format") would make it harder for people to find, especially since quite often they won't know English that well.

It is handy to be able to set text-related settings for a particular country all at once. For example, if you're in France you probably want to set the short date format to dd/mm/yyyy, the thousands separator to a space, and the decimal marker to a comma, all at once. Bug 1248349 is about that.

But I cannot see how it would be a good idea for phone number format to be switchable as part of those locale settings. The appropriate formatting of a phone number depends on what country that number resolves to, which depends on its country code and/or what country you were in when you dialled it. It should not depend on what your locale setting happened to be when you dialled it, and especially not on what your locale setting happened to be at the moment you happened to look at the call history! For that reason, this is not a System Settings bug, and not a duplicate of bug 1248349.

Even if you disagree with that, though, while I'm not responsible for the design of the phone app, it shouldn't be controversial that the call history should show exactly the numbers you dialled, regardless of how they are formatted.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

I made a mistake in my previous comment. When I said that formatting of a phone number "should not depend on what your locale setting happened to be when you dialled it, and especially not on what your locale setting happened to be at the moment you happened to look at the call history", I think that's true for international numbers: they should follow the E.123 standard regardless. But it is not true for domestic numbers: they differ in grouping and separators.

The problem here seems to be that the Chinese number 18812345678 is being displayed as if it was an North American (NANP) number, merely because Wenfang is using the American locale. So the "1" is wrongly interpreted as North America's optional trunk code and dropped, the "881" is wrongly interpreted as a North American area code and bracketed, and the rest is wrongly displayed using the North American "-" separator. Result: [phone].

So, I guess what the call history needs to do is to remember what country you were in for each domestic number you dial, and format it following the locale for that country.

[Albert Astals Cid (aacid)]

unity8 waiting for design -> incomplete

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Okay, if you insist ... Phone app specification updated. <https://goo.gl/xeNKAV>