Windows Phone 8 support to capture SMS or a incoming call?

Question

Can we write 3rd-party app to capture SMS or a incoming call on Windows phone 8?

Endometrium

Have you got any workaround on this? – Cupule

no, I'm waiting for wp8.1 sdk release in early April. – Endometrium

So, will 8.1 promised have this feature? – Cupule

I'm not 100% sure, it's said it can access sms. But for incoming call, there are no any news for it. – Endometrium

And what about Background tasks? Will Wp 8.1 give more flexibility on that? – Cupule

Looks like it will be consistent with Windows RT. – Endometrium

Ok, thanks for taking time to answer my queries. – Cupule

Has this been tried on WP8.1? Links? – Bangs

Answer 1

Can we write 3rd-part app to capture SMS or a incoming call on Windows phone 8?

No.

Dickdicken

Could you provide an explanation why? – Gauger

Security, privacy. It's not hard to imagine one of the many reasons. Just look at the amount of malware on Android and you'll know why. – Quern

if anyone could read sms info or call info, then those can be intercepted and can be shared online without user intervention instantly, which poses a security threat to user's personal information – Hoagland

but with them, 3rd part app can help user capture spam SMS or sale call and so on, it's very useful, more good than bad. – Endometrium

Except when you realise that any 3rd party device (glass, pebble etc) needs access to subscribe to these types of events. Windows Phone developers are severely crippled by this limitation. – Kathrinekathryn

@ClausJørgensen-MSFT ,Is this same in WP 8.1. We still don't have any API to read sms ? – Primer

@ClausJørgensen Cliff Simpkins marked this as IT'S DONE. But I'm confused. Is it possible to capture incoming calls / sms' now? Do you have any work regarding this? – Shatterproof

@Shatterproof You can register a system event that'll trigger your application's background process to run a event when you get a incoming SMS. However, you can't intercept the content, only react to it after it happened. – Quern

@ClausJørgensen thank you. I couldn't understand why the suggestion has been marked done. according to the OP's idea, nothing is done. weird. – Shatterproof

Answer 2

Following up on previous answers, those APIs are currently kept to trusted partners only (Mobile operators, OEMs, well-known brand names, etc). There just weren't enough developers asking for it to be included in WP8.

If you feel like you have a legitimate usecase to intercept incoming communication, please share it on the windows phone developer uservoice suggestion for this topic.

Jonijonie

yes! I want to make a desktop notification app that I have an incoming call on my phone incase I don't hear it or it's charging in the other room. how cool would that be! – Haye

@JustinAngel, could you please provide some refs to documentation or refs for app that use those APIs? – Gargantua

Answer 3

There is Windows.Phone.Networking.NetworkOperators.SmsInterceptor class, but there is a note next to it "This API is not intended to be used directly from your code." so I'm not sure if we can actually use it or not?

Amenable

Why not? This would allow us to create things like bringing Pebble smart watch support to Windows Phone 8? – Kathrinekathryn