Send and receive business cards (vCard) via SMS on Android

Important UPDATE: It is possible to send even MMS vCard from your Android device since bizCard Manager version 2.0.0. Don't miss it and check bizCard Manager on Googlr Play. If you are interested in solution only please follow the Google Play links down below directly so you don't have to read following description of how the story happened. I'm really pleasantly surprised since I bought my new Samsung Galaxy Nexsus smart phone — it fits all my needs in terms of smart phone. The Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwitch together with perfectly tuned up hardware makes the phone handy for every task it is designed to. Even with pure Android — without any user interface addons like TouchWiz — it's intuitively manageable. The first and only inconvience appeared while I noticed that something is wrong with business card receiving. Colleague of mine called me and asked me to call the person he sent me the details in business card recently. But what a surprise — my phone silently ignored all that kind of messages i have been sent.

Looking for solution

Usual trick — go to Google Play, find vCard via SMS compatible app, install (and even pay) and forget — did not work in this case. Not that the Google Play (formerly Market) is not full of apps claiming they are able to send and even receive business cards — few of them are able to, but it really depends on what their authors meant by the term of business card exchange. The most simple apps just pick the contact name and phone detail(s) and send them as a plain text SMS in Name, phone number format. User doesn't have to manually copy and paste details from contact list to SMS so it's more comfortable to share selected contact. But recipinet still has to manually process incoming details. More advanced apps claim business card sharing functionality. Even though I have not tested them thoroughly — i've requested refund immediately when I've had figured out they do not support receiving business cards from Nokia phones — I've noticed they can send business card in vCard v2.1 format what is important prerequisite for automatic processing of business card on recipient devices. Unfortunatelly, those apps send vCard data as plain text SMS messages which are displayed as plain text messages with raw vCard data on mostly all target devices. Recipients are not able to automatically process such received cards not even read card's data easily.

No solution at all?

I'm still quite surprised that I haven't found working app supporting Nokia compatible business card exchange — which is supported on almost all non-Nokia devices except Android phones. You will even see a lot of unaswered topics while browsing Android forums around the net. So after a month of research I've gave it up. I sat down to the computer and started learning Android insides to get business card exchange working by my self. It was a wonderful trip, sometimes tough but finally successful thanks to a broad community of developers around the net.

Solution: bizCard Manager

There is bizCard Manager and a it's FREE version bizCard Manager FREE available on Google Play platform. The FREE version has few limitations and is intended for testing purposes only. This is finally the app that allows user to send and receive business cards via SMS on Android phones compatible with world-wide Nokia standard.

Main features

• Send and receive business cards via SMS on Android devices including support for Nokia phones!
• Perform direct actions on business card details (call number, send e-mail) even without need to accept card into contacts.
• Nice business card UI — no raw vCard data displayed to the user.
• Share contacts via SMS directly from contacts list.
• Supports multiple contact list accounts.
• Localized to EN, CZ, SK and we are working on DE.

Conclusion

I've solved the lack of contact sharing via SMS functionality by creating the bizCard Manager app, now available on Google Play. You can support it's development by buying full version for USD 0.99 and if you decide to do so, I really thank you for your support. Also, I'd like to hear your feedback. If you have anything you would like to tell, please let me know in comments here, use contact form or just rate the bizCard Manager on Google Play. Thank you for that!