Comments on: Add a “Dial Extension” Button to Contacts on iPhone

By: Neil

Neil — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 20:43:02 +0000

Using a comma for a pause in phone number strings goes back at least to the days of dial-up modems, where you might first have to dial a number to get an outside line, then the phone number itself, and so on. A comma is used to insert a pause to allow time for the preceding action to complete. It still works on most autodial systems, cellphones or otherwise.

What’s new here is using a semicolon to generate the manual “Dial #” button. No giant big deal, but it’s a nice implementation that I can imagine being useful on occasion.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 12:23:11 +0000

The “Dial #” button is new, but of course inserting pauses and then sending more numbers is NOT new.

By: vdiv

vdiv — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 17:59:51 +0000

wow, my 15 year old Nokia phone did this (; was actually a p). Is this really a new feature in iOS6? Is the iPhone really being developed by people who have never used a cell phone before? Imagine how much better it would have been if they actually had some prior experience.

By: حسام

حسام — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:17:54 +0000

oooh!! that’s a good trick .. Thanks4u

By: Stuart

Stuart — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 03:21:55 +0000

If you don’t want to use the Dial 123 option, you can replace the wait with a pause (I typically use 2 pauses) after which the phone will send the extension tones.

using the example in the main article the number would become.

1-888-555-5555,,123 (“,” inserts ~ 2 second delay)

This is great for conference calls, as you can string together multiple numbers to automatically dial the call bridge, enter the bridge code, pause for name announcement as follows

1-888-555-5555,,#,,,,#

This type of number command sequence works on every cell phone

By: Haruhiko

Haruhiko — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:41:22 +0000

Thank you so much! I didn’t know this!

By: Hungry

Hungry — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:41:59 +0000

Snow phone! Though with that example the auto-dial “1″ would be better I think.

Nice trick though as usual, thanks.