Call doesn't start in ACR Phone.

[ghkaan]

Garmin Fenix 7X, Handsfree v.1;
Samsung S23U, phone app - ACR Phone, companion app - Version 0.0.3 (56) ec59545 (release);
When I select phone number on my watch, companion app starts ACR Phone and shows the number there, but doesn't start the call itself.

[grigorye]

@ghkaan Thanks for the report, I gave it a try with ACR Phone and could reproduce it. Will try to look into it, but fixing it will potentially take some time (if possible at all). Currently the companion app relies on opening "tel:" urls, but it looks like it's potentially not enough to make ACR Phone to acutally start the call. Need to investigate it further - whether it's something wrong with sending tel: url to ACR phone or probably using some other API for making calls could make it work, or it's some kind of other limitation (e.g. enforced by Google).

[grigorye]

I'll also try to reach to the developers of ACR phone - probably they can shed some light on this.

[NLLAPPS]

Hi all, this is intentional behaviour due to a possible security issue with Android. Please see https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/305466094#comment9 and corresponding vulnerability https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-21313

Essentially, a 3rd party app can create an specific intent and make ACR Phone to dial directly without user interaction.

While Google only preventing running MMI codes, we opted for broader approach until the issue is fixed in (hopefully) future releases of Android.

[grigorye]

@NLLAPPS Out of curiosity, you don't want to let the users to opt-in into less secure setup, e.g. by providing a (user) setting to support this kind of scenario, correct?

[NLLAPPS]

Yes, that's not something would add at this moment.