How to find a telephone number strored in contacts by searching for a substring on iPhone

Question

I'd like to search my iPhone contacts using a part of a telephone number as a key (search by substring). The integrated spotlight search, however, doesn't return any entries when searching for a full telephone number or for its part. The number formatting in search doesn't appear to make any difference.

Suppose there an entry in the Contacts.app (number is shown exactly as it apperars on the screen):

John Smith

mobile: +41 76 123 23 43

Neither of the following searches in spotlight returns "John Smith", as expected

+41 76 123 23 43

+41761232343

2343

Is it possible to search for a number using spotlight or an alternative application?

Tested on iPhone 3GS with iOS 4.2.1

Answer 1

There is an app for that. :-)

One of the first apps I installed: Contact by Number.

Actually, there are a few others, and this one hasn't been updated since 2008, but it does what you want and has served me well.