1224779 - Should we special case sms* handling for Samsung devices?

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Allison Naaktgeboren :ally]

While working on the family of sms(to)/mms(to) bugs, it has come to my attention that the Samsung, in their infinite wisdom, has monkeyed with how sms to multiple numbers should be handled. The separator needs to be ',' instead of the ';' android specifies. 

I can fix this easily enough, assuming android.os.Build.MANUFACTURER.equalsIgnoreCase("samsung") still does what it says on the box. The question from my perspective  is, should we?

Comment 1

[Barbara Bermes [:barbara] - NI please!]

Considering that Samsung devices are used by most of our users, I'm in favour of doing this if it's not too big of a hack. Margaret, what do you think?

In general, how often do we put device specific cases in our code?

Comment 2

[:Margaret Leibovic]

We generally avoid device-specific cases in our code as much as possible.

Do we know how common it is to have URIs to message multiple numbers? I would think that's an uncommon use case, so I don't know if it's worth adding special-case logic.

Is this documented somewhere, or just something that happens? It makes me nervous to code around what sounds like an undocumented bug in Samsung's logic.

Also, does this just happen with the Samsung messaging app, or does it happen with other messaging apps on Samsung devices? For example, what if you use Hangouts as your default SMS app?

Given the potential for edge cases where our hack can go wrong, I don't think it's worth adding a special hack in here.

Comment 3

[Allison Naaktgeboren :ally]

(In reply to :Margaret Leibovic from comment #2)
> We generally avoid device-specific cases in our code as much as possible.
> 
> Do we know how common it is to have URIs to message multiple numbers? I
> would think that's an uncommon use case, so I don't know if it's worth
> adding special-case logic.

I have seen enough coverage about them in documentation and test pages to suggest that they make up a nontrivial percentage. 

> 
> Is this documented somewhere, or just something that happens? It makes me
> nervous to code around what sounds like an undocumented bug in Samsung's
> logic.

It does not appear to be documented officially, but then neither is the related stuff in bug 1209133. 

> 
> Also, does this just happen with the Samsung messaging app, or does it
> happen with other messaging apps on Samsung devices? For example, what if
> you use Hangouts as your default SMS app?

Various posts on stack overflow don't specify 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4057086/how-do-i-send-sms-to-multiple-phone-numbers-in-android
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11687092/sending-sms-to-multiple-recepients-samsung-vs-htc

Hangouts seems to behave ok in either case, so I'm inclined to believe it's the samsung default app.
> 
> Given the potential for edge cases where our hack can go wrong, I don't
> think it's worth adding a special hack in here.

As long as it's a considered decision, that's fine with me.