Since the last app or UI update (not sure which but it was relatively recent), the Samsung Contacts app no longer shows the "Other" phone number field. I've noticed this on a number of S22 and S23 phones as well as S9 Tab tablets. It has what are IMO useless field categories like "Home Fax", "Pager", "Car", "MMS" and "Radio" - things that have not been in use for the last 20 years - and yet Samsung mysteriously decided to get rid of the one field that actually did have a meaningful description. This is a problem because many people use "Other" as a meaningful description for someone's phone number that does not fit in any of the other categories that are available.
The much bigger issue here is that I support large enterprise deployments (all of which use Microsoft Exchange for their email), and all contacts that have an "Other" phone number associated are no longer synced to the users' phones. There is no ability to remap fields (so that the "Other" phone numbers in Outlook & Exchange would show up under "Pager" or "Radio" on the phones for example), which in turn leads to users being unable to see or call someone's "Other" number. Manually going through tens of thousands of contacts for hundreds of users is obviously not an option.
Any suggestions? We do like the flexibility of Android, but if this doesn't get resolved ASAP, we will have no choice but to start deploying only iPhones, which as much as I hate, are definitely a lot easier to deploy and manage.
So - it is an issue with the Samsung Contacts app when connecting to a Microsoft 365 Exchange server only. I do see the Other field when I select a contact in a Gmail address book for example and want to add a number there, but not in Exchange. The MDM solution or any other apps have no bearing on it whatsoever - it is a bug in the Samsung Contacts app. The native contacts apps on an Apple iPhone or an older Google Pixel 5a that I have sitting around work just fine.
The situation gets outright bizarre once you add the mobile Outlook app to the mix. Outlook properly syncs everything, and after adding Outlook on the phone, contacts that have an Other phone number associated with them do show the same in the native Samsung Contacts app as well. You can edit or delete the Other number through the native contacts app and it will properly sync everywhere, but you still can't add one to an existing contact that doesn't already have one. The moment you remove the Outlook account from the phone, the Other fields disappear for all Exchange contacts.
This is going to be a fun one to manage, never mind solve.
Exchange is by far the dominant enterprise email platform, so if Samsung doesn't address this soon, I suspect corporate clients might indeed start looking at other options. It could be a bug with OneUI 6 / 6.1, but it is definitely an issue on Samsung phones only.
