android Outbound caller id - on/off

Question

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

1. Permanent requests the network to hide the caller ID for all calls.
2. 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

Answer 5

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);