The present disclosure relates in general to communication between electronic devices and in particular to communicating phone number and other contact information between two electronic devices, such as a between two cellular telephones.
Mobile devices, including smart phones, personal digital assistants, and tablet computers, are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. These devices are increasing being used to make voice and video calls and to store contact information useful in establishing such calls. For example, a user of a smart phone device can typically save contact information records for themselves and others on the device. The contact information records include information about home addresses, business addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc. and can be used to initiate direct communication with the associated contacts. For example, the smart phone user may open a contact and initiate a one touch command to call that contact's cellular telephone number. As another example, a user may click on a contact name displayed in a contact's listing and select to send an e-mail or text message to the selected contact.
Contact information records contain useful information about a person's contacts and can be shared with others in various ways. Contact information records can be sent via e-mail, Short Message Service (SMS), Bluetooth, WI-FI, using specific business card and contact tracking applications, and using other options. The vCard format is a file format for storing and exchanging electronic business cards that allows the vCards to be exchanged as attachments to e-mail messages, through instant messaging, and in other ways on the Internet. A first user may, for example, sends a text message with his or her vCard to a second user so that the second user can easily contact the first user. Once the second user has the vCard, the second user can use the telephone number and other contact information from the vCard to call or otherwise contact the first user. Phone numbers and other contact information used in vCards is, however, sometimes inaccurate, for example, in that location differences are not addressed. Dialing prefixes may be missing or inaccurate. This can result in failed call attempts and require significant effort on the part of the user to identify and enter an appropriate dialing prefix.