When I enter a phone number it comes up as +1234567890, and while yes it physically works fine for calling someone, it looks unpleasant and is difficult to discern where you are in dialing a number when it's simpy a long string of numbers. Is there any way to get it to display in the typical "phone number" looking format? You know, 123-456-7890, with the hyphens. I don't even need the plus sign, I'm never dialing international.

Also, in case anyone was wondering, the lasers are my favorite pickup in brickbreaker.

Away, I don't know a way to do that, if you find one, please share it.

Darn, I thought it was going to be a stupid question and someone would come along with a simple answer for me. Just one of those things you take for granted I suppose, a phone number looking like a phone number.

Is it just me, or does this bother anyone else?

Drives me nuts. My job actually involves me giving out phone numbers in my address book to other people (it's all employee related) and half the time I have to repeat it because there are duplicate numbers with the area code and first string of phone numbers. For example, many numbers here for Verizon started with 978886.

Perhaps it can be addressed in an OS update in the future? Is there someone or somewhere to send a request like that, or will it fall on deaf ears?

I like the dashes too, helps me read them as Dave said.

When I bored (often enough) or on a long phone call, I edit them and place the dashes in my Outlook, which syncs back to BB in the format we all desire.

One more hour long conference call I will likely be finished.

Make sure you suggest it such a way that the format fit ALL foreign carriers as well as Canada. Otherwise, defaulting to the dash format won't be accepted worldwide, and RIM could probably care less about doing it.

After reading this thread and agreeing that it is a pain, i experimented. On the Pearl, you can hit the Shift-SYM keys (Big arrow and the asterix). That takes you to the Symbol screen. you can add a dash or even put parentheses around the area code.

Darn, I was also hoping there was an easier way to view phone numbers. The dashes are my preferred way to view it too, but I'd take the combo parentheses and dash over one long string of easytoconfuseandhardtoreadnumbers.

You misunderstood my post. You can add just a dash or just parens or both. Just inser the cursor where you want the dash, hist the shift then the sym key.

Am I missing something here? I always enter phone numbers as +1 (999) 999-9999 and it's shows that way. Only incoming calls from callers not in my AB do not show as formated,

It will be entered in with xxx-xxx-xxxx if you add it via outlook contacts and then sync it up. I had the same issue and using outlook to re-edit my phone numbers was the only way to do it.

You don't need to enter the "+1". That should be set in your phone > options > smart dialing.

why not just hit the I key when entering numbers? (its the dash key)

^^works for me!