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Tutorial was sourced from flop ya mac out

Note: In firmware v1.1.1 the address book formats file is now located in /System/Library/Frameworks/UIKit.f­ramework/Ph­oneFormats/UIPhoneFor­mats.plist

They've changed the location of the file, but the method and format otherwise remain the same

Your iPhone, without this hack, will have US format phone numbers. They may look like this: (415) 440-1950 - If you want it in an Australian format, such as (03) 5123 6102, then this is the hack for you. It will also reformat the contact phone numbers, and works well with mobile numbers in Australia.

If you’ve done this by replacing the ‘US’ value in the PhoneFormats file with that of your own country, you may have noticed that Apple’s interpretation of how your local numbers should look isn’t quite what you had in mind!

I certainly did, so instead of copying the default set of Australian values into the US spot, I pasted in the following:

04## ### ###
+6# ### ### ###
(03) #### ####
(08) #### ####
(02) #### ####
9### ####
8### ####
5### ####
1#00 ### ###

Now iPhone can tell the difference between a mobile number and a home number with an area code present!

Of course this list serves me well, for a Victorian, however you may feel free to make changes to suit your own locality. For those international visitors, play around with mixing hash signs with numbers in order to get the desired effect.

Using the Address Book as a testing ground is a great time saver.

Additionally, I ended up keeping all these filters into my Mac’s Address Book for smooth Australian action everywhere!

How to change iPhone’s default number format - a recap

If you need a recap on how to modify the number formats on your iPhone, here’s a quick summary, thanks to the numerous excellent iPhone blogs such as modmyiphone and hackint0sh:

Using SFTP (which you would have installed using iNdependance and instructions like this when you unlocked your iPhone), retrieve from your iPhone the file:

/System/Library/Frameworks/AddressBookUI.framework/ABPhoneFormats.plist (For 1.0.2)

Pop this file through this handy BINARY to ASCII converter, open with TextEdit and find the ‘US’ country value. Replace the values in it with those from your own country code (AU, for Australia) or even better, using your own customised version of the ones listed above.

Save and replace this file once again via SFTP, then restart your iPhone.

We are receivng many e-mails about help for this hack. Note, you need WinSCP to connect to your file directory. Download it and connect using the tutorial from modmyiphone. Due to the amount of e-mails, we cannot reply to them all. Please post on the modmyiphone forum for further assistance. 

Can't do it yourself? To be honest, this hack isn't for the faint of heart. We can provide this service to you. Mail us your iPhone, and we'll change it for the Australian phone formats! This service costs just $40.00  AUD plus postage costs.

Please contact us if you are interested or click here for more information.