Ability to search using phonetic names #5012
Description
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
It seems that current contact search only matches exact characters of stored names. For some other languages like Chinese, users must switch IME and select the exact native characters to find entries, reducing speed. Ability to search by phonetic names (e.g. Pinyin for Chinese names) would make this faster.
Describe the solution you'd like
Support phonetic search for CJK names. For example, the contact "测试联系" (Phonetics Cèshì Liánxì) can be searched using "Ceshi" and/or "Lianxi."
An easy approach might be allowing search using "Phonetic first/last name" field. The iOS Contacts app automatically adds accents, but alphabets with and without diacritic marks may be treated the same. (This is what iOS does, as provided in the two screenshots below)
Describe alternatives you've considered
Another method would be matching each character with its readings, although I believe this may require some more work, and may cause issues as there may be one same character in different languages.
Additional context
No response