DEVELOPERS BLOG

Say Hello to Phone API 10.3

CASCADES / 07.31.14 / shadidhaque

BetaSDKv_2

With the launch of the 10.3 Gold SDK, I am very excited to announce several improvements to our Phone APIs. With user’s direct permission, these APIs will provide better control over a phone call, access to call logs, and access to the phone audio channel for call recording.

When it comes to call control, previously we had the ability to only initiate and end calls. To provide better control over ongoing, incoming and outgoing phone calls, the Phone class is now equipped with several new functions. If you need to put a call on hold, you can now use holdCall and to resume a call you can use resumeCall. You can also split a conference call into two calls with splitCall as well as merge two calls by calling mergeCall. Combining previous APIs such as initiateCall, encCall and sendDTMFTones, I think this pretty much completes the Phone APIs when it comes to controlling phone calls. Oh, and before I forget, 10.3 also introduces initiateVideoCall to start a video call such as BBM Video.

blackberry-passport-call-screen1

Next up are APIs for call details and call logs. Remember that callUpdated signal which gave you a Call object but didn’t actually provide the number of the party on the other end? The wait is over; the call object now has a convenient function called phoneNumber that lets you read the phone number of the calling party. Problem solved! I know a lot of us, including myself, are super excited about this; so call blockers, please go nuts. But we did not quite stop there. In 10.3, we are also introducing a CallHistoryService for reading call logs. Remember, you can only read the call log with this service. The CallHistoryService also comes with useful signals for when a call is added or deleted from the call log.

These enhancements to our existing Phone APIs line up quite well with our renewed focus on enterprise solutions. In fact, we built these with pure enterprise use cases in mind. Solutions such as enterprise call recording via a proxy server or call blocking will greatly benefit from this, but please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions @ShadidHaque.

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