Develop Reference

How to obtain Phone Number in Android?

This is an extension to the question here. Now I quote CommonsWare
There is no reliable way to retrieve mobile number of device programatically. The only option remaining and I can think of is getting user to input for the phone number.
My question is how to check if the phone number entered by the user is correct for these and any more possibilities which I cannot think now:
The number entered by the user is of the same device the app has been downloaded on.
User did not make any typographical error while entering the number
User did not enter any local calling code like leading 0
I have spend sufficient time on StackOverflow and web and this is not a duplicate question.
I will appreciate any help, clues or suggestions.

1.The number entered by the user is of the same device the app has been downloaded on.
Again this is something kind of impossible to test, else the Tricky way mentioned by #neteinstein
2.User did not make any typographical error while entering the number
3.User did not enter any local calling code like leading 0
I think you still not aware of this library by google,used for Parsing/formatting/validating phone numbers for all countries/regions of the world.
Using that you can achive your other 2 solutions.I think.
Link : http://code.google.com/p/libphonenumber/

If you are willing to possibly spend some user money you can send an SMS to yourself (number inputted by the user) and check if it arrives.
If it does, the number is correct. If not... either you have no network, or the number is incorrect.
I don't even think the phone has the number visibility, according to my experience with Mobile Operators, only on their side they have that visibility.

Though I do not know about nr1, I think you can solve problem nr 2 and 3 quite easily by analysing the number while its a String. That way you can easily check what characters it contains and what positions these characters are on.
I hope this helps.
Greets,
Wottah

android how to get the emergency number to call

I see there are plenty of examples on how to call a number, and I also see that I can only have it pop up the dialer to go to an emergency number. But in all those example they hard coded "911" as the number to use. well this works fine in the US but since android phones are sold in other countries and thusly there is the possibility that my app will be bought by someone not in the US, or that someone who lives in the us may take their phone overseas; is there a way then my app can realize it's not in the us and thusly has to use a different number to call emergency service and what that number would be?
So to sum up I'd like to know if there is a way I can have it so when the app goes to bring up the dialer with the emergency number for the country it's in, with out having to know that number at complie time?

According to the source for PhoneNumberUtils.isEmergencyNumber():
String numbers = SystemProperties.get("ril.ecclist");
if (TextUtils.isEmpty(numbers)) {
// then read-only ecclist property since old RIL only uses this
numbers = SystemProperties.get("ro.ril.ecclist");
}
numbers will be a comma separated list.

android Outbound caller id - on/off

I wan to hide/show my caller id from my activity programmatically. I tried to find it in the android documentation but without the luck. Maybe you have any ideas?

I posted a question asking this on the Android Google group and got absolutely no answers at all. I've also seen a couple of other question on SO which also had no answers (or none that work).
I came to the conclusion that it simply isn't possible. My reasoning is this...
If I go to Settings -> Call -> Additional settings, I see an AlertDialog which has a HeaderTitle of 'Call settings' and I see a circular progress indicator and a message saying 'Reading settings...'.
It occurs to me that my phone is, at that point, accessing my phone/network provider. The resulting 'chooser' dialog gives me options for 'Network default', 'Hide number' and 'Show number' and when I make a selection (or even if I just 'Cancel' the dialog), I get another AlertDialog with circular progress indicator with the message 'Updating settings...'.
In short, it seems the Caller ID setting is not entirely 'local' to the phone settings and relies on interaction with the provider and, for whatever reason, as a result of this the Android APIs don't allow this to be manipulated programatically.
I'm not sure if this is something on the 'To Do' list for future versions of Android or if there are legal/security implications in allowing it to be done or some other reason. Whatever the case may be, I haven't found anybody so far who is able to explain why there isn't a method for TelephonyManager (for example) to simply switch this.
EDIT: No luck on getting the Additional Settings AlertDialog with the standard APIs either.
The reason I say that is that it is possible to pull up various parts of the device's 'Settings', e.g., in one of my apps I use android.provider.Settings.ACTION_WIRELESS_SETTINGS in the constructor of an Intent passed to startActivity(). This brings up the Settings page for enabling/disabling wi-fi, mobile internet and bluetooth.
android.provider.Settings has other similar ACTIONs for other Settings pages but there isn't even one for 'Call' never mind Call -> Additional Settings and nothing for the AlertDialog to allow you to choose to Hide/Show the outgoing Caller ID.
If this can be done then it would have to be an undocumented API unless I completely missed it (I spent a long time looking). I suspect examining the Android source-code may be the only way to find an answer and I haven't attempted that yet.

I have managed to get Additional call settings dialog. Explanation below:
Although it looks like it is part of the Settings, in fact it is part of the Native PhoneApp. If you take a look at the AndroidManifest.xml of the PhoneApp you will see that Activity GsmUmtsAdditionalCallOptions has defined IntentFilter for the android.intent.action.MAIN.
So, the code that I checked to work correctly on several phones:
Intent additionalCallSettingsIntent = new Intent("android.intent.action.MAIN");
ComponentName distantActivity = new ComponentName("com.android.phone", "com.android.phone.GsmUmtsAdditionalCallOptions");
additionalCallSettingsIntent.setComponent(distantActivity);
startActivity(additionalCallSettingsIntent);

If the #31# trick works for your needs for a single call then you could add a broadcast receiver that listens for the outgoing call notification and modifies the number to include #31# at the start before it gets dialled. Android allows the number to be changed on the way through like that.
Only works if your default is to enable caller ID and your network support #31# and you want to toggle it off using a widget, say.

The Caller ID is network specific not something that the phone controls. In fact in certain mobile network configurations the phone doesn't even 'know' its own phone number.
Some networks support sending an activate/deactivate caller ID network command. In GSM this is normally #31#. It can be permanent or on a per call basis.
Permanent requests the network to hide the caller ID for all calls.
Per call requests the network to hide the caller ID only for that call. The latter is achieved by prefixing the number being called by #31#, so for example calling #31#85432786426 would call 85432786426 hiding the caller.
Some networks support both, some only support one of them, and some do not enable it. Try your luck and try prefixing the dialed number with #31# and see if it works.
http://www.gsm-security.net/faq/gsm-caller-id-clip-clir.shtml

If you want a shortcut to the additional call settings, you can use App Cut and select GSM settings. It will place a shortcut on your home screen.

Determining what # is being dialed on Android

I know that with the telephony manager listen, you can listen for 3 different states. Iknow that CALL_STATE_OFFHOOK indicates that there is at least one call that is dialing, active, etc. My question is- with the telephony manager, is there a way to determine what number the phone is off hook with? I thought getLine1Number() might return that phone number that is being dialed, but it is not what I expect. I am working with 2 emulators, and added a log line so that I could see what that method is doing. When dialing another emulator, I expected getLine1Number() to return 5554, but it was 15555218135. Perhaps there is another method I should be using instead? Do I need to be into the source code to get the information I want?

Clearly, getLine1Number() is returning the phone's number. I currently have a work around of having the user use the program to initiate a call. They enter the number to dial in a text box and that way I can capture the number.

Is there a way to to create a custom answering machine in android?

I'd like to create an app that allow you to filter incoming call to various answering message with :
"this number is not available" for black listed phone numbers
A formal message for strangers
A informative message about what your doing for friends
I don't know how you can get automatically a call, play a recorded message then wait for the answer and record it. Or maybe there is just a way to interact with the actual answering system so I just have to plugin.
Any clue strongly appreciated. A human sacrifice for any code snippet :-)

Access to the internal telephony is not possible or planned for future releases of Android:
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/e8904c82a2c4a333
This would present a security risk as app developers could intercept and hijack sensitive calls (eg. telephone banking)

This is not possible on the tmobile G1 at this time. There is no way for an android SDK application to access the call input or output on this hardware/firmware combination.
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/d04c307973345fef/a628e578900b3dce?lnk=gst&q=dave+sparks+play+audio#a628e578900b3dce
and
http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers/browse_thread/thread/185e33a3f420d1ac/e14e1dc84bb6dd24?lnk=gst&q=play+sound+call#e14e1dc84bb6dd24

I'm not sure this answers the question, but it is somewhat related I think.
You can install Ultimate Voice Recorder which can record your conversations (very useful when calling customer 'service'). Since it can record it, it must have some way to access the conversation.
Also, the capabilities you have to give the app are quite scary (translated from dutch: full internet access, intercept outgoing calls, change preferences, call phone numbers directly, record audio/take pictures, update contacts, auto startup). It seems to me there must be something in there that can help you?
However, I don't think it can inject audio into the stream. The symbian version had an option to insert beeps into the conversation, but I don't think the android version has it.
http://www.fingertip-access.com/

I have found out att for this use of your Phone Android or ISO, so far they ar decades behinde symbian and an inferior alternativ sadly, if you don't install a custom kernel/jailbreak it's not possible to record incoming calls and screen them. "Ultimate Voice Record ned you to use the phone in speaker mode."

it is possible to record voice calls with automatic answer. An update on this issue would be very helpful...
It is possible to have a resource that answers the calls. Enter a message and record the call. And together don't activate the microphone...
In short, an answering machine...