Cordova trying to dial telephone number

I am trying to dial a phone number in iOS, however I only have the simulator and an iPod Touch to test on.

The code uses something along the lines of:

window.location.href = 'tel:01234567890';

Working fine with Android, but in iOS it dies with:

Failed to load webpage with error: The URL can't be shown

Now, I do realise this has been asked before, but the general consensus from some time ago was "It doesn't work, you'll need to use a plugin". There haven't been many questions on this for some time though, and what questions there are seem to suggest it works when doing it programmatically (as above with window.location.href). I have tried the iOS PhoneDialer and the newer version of the same plugin, but both have errors in XCode (ARC forbids explicit message send of 'release') - a bit of faffing and I can get this running, but then PhoneGap doesn't find the plugin - it really feels like I'm hitting a brick wall with this method, and I can't believe something as simple as this requires something so over the top.

I know you cannot auto-dial/auto-call a number for security reasons, but all I need to do is open the dialer with number pre-populated, which is surely no different to a mailto:[email protected] link opening your email client with the sender pre-populated?

So, my questions are:

Has this changed with a recent update to PhoneGap, iOS or XCode?
Or, is it a case that I cannot do this on an iPod or Simulator, and it will work fine on an iPhone?
How can I fix it? :)

Solution

You didn't specify which version of Cordova you are using so I'm going to assume version > 3.

Make sure that InAppBrowser, a plugin since version 3, is installed and then open the link by calling it through Javascript like this:

window.open('tel:12345678', '_system')

_system will open it with the systems own browser which in turn will open the call dialog, if you use it against http://maps.apple.com/ it will open in the maps app and similar for other apps which opens for special urls.

Remarks:

As described in the docs of the InAppBrowser plugin the window.open function won't be set automatically. You have to do it your self: window.open = cordova.InAppBrowser.open;. Instead you can directly use cordova.InAppBrowser.open('tel:12345678', '_system');
Make sure your number doesn't have any blankspaces in it (the + prefix is okay). For example you could use a function like the following, assuming num is a string.

Function:

function placeCall(num) {
    if (window.cordova) {
        cordova.InAppBrowser.open('tel:' + num.replace(/\s/g,''), '_system');
    }
}