[Sigia-l] SMS and phone number labeling

[John O'Donovan]

The problem is you can't tell reliably which phones can receive SMS or not
reliably. The network provides no feedback and it is a fire and forget
protocol. Even when sending to mobiles, I have had messages turn up hours or
days after they were sent.  The basic problem is that you cannot tell what
type of numbers may or may not be able to receive SMS messages now or in the
future. For example, if you are roaming internationally and your phone only
thinks mobiles start with an 07 prefix you won't be able to send SMS in that
country if mobiles begin with 08. Likewise you would have to handle
international dialling codes etc.

If you try to be too clever and only show a limited set of numbers, such as
people here who have mentioned that their old phone only showed mobile
numbers when sending an SMS, they would not be able to send an SMS to the
new range of landline phones available in the UK and I assume elsewhere. The
technology would not be flexible enough and would break.

Another way to think about it is that you probably want to send your SMS to
a person and not a phone. Therefore, if you make sure that each name entered
in the phone is unique and the all the numbers for each person go against
the same name then you choose the person you want to send to and the phone
does the rest - sending the message to the person on all numbers.

I hate the way my phone forces me to have two entries for each person with
the same name - one for the home one for the mobile. Or it forces me to put
in one for Luke Home and one for Luke Mobile. I also know more than one
Luke. None of this helps me. I'd rather gather all the contact details for a
person under one name.

Other thoughts are that you could hint to the user that the text message may
not work to a land line but you still need to show all the numbers.

Also, on navigation, I have never had a problem finding people in the phone
list even with a couple of hundred numbers. Every phone I have had allows me
to press the first letter of the persons name that I am looking for and
jumps to that point in the list. This reduces the number of options and
works OK for finding names quickly. Being able to speak names into the phone
may also help.

Perhaps displaying the number with the name will also help. You can scan a
list with several entries called Luke and if you are looking for the mobile
number you will be able to see it. Of course you may want to send an SMS to
his home phone line anyway...