iMessage issues with stored phone numbers and caller IDs differences
Hi, there is an issue we see with the automatic iMessage Contact Detection process:
In Mexico usually people store the 10-digit cell phone numbers with the country code added so we can dial any number regardless of where people make the call.
An example:
If my girlfriend's number is 55 1234 5678. Usually it would be stored as +5255 1234 5678.
The issue is that for mobile phones, calls from outside Mexico must add a number one (1) after the country code.
This is why many people store the numbers with +521 prepending, in this example it would be stored as +52155 1234 5678. So we can use the same contact even if we are abroad.
In this case, iMessage cannot identify that a contact has iMessage (the contact remains green).
I need to manually enter +5255 1234 5678 to have iMessage identify that my girlfriend has iMessage too !! (to have the contact change to blue), natively with the number 1 after the country code it does not trigger the detection.
It would be nice if it just matched the last digits to do so, in this way, it does not matter if you store the number without area code, with area code or with country code... this is how Whatsapp, Viber and other apps do it.
I hope you can fix this so many people can switch seamlessly from Whatsapp to iMessage.
I am sure this also happens in other countries too.
Regards.