Question

If a page has a URL or a phone number on it that isn’t a link is there any way to have WebView recognize it and automatically turn it into a link like you can with TextViews?

With a TextView you would simply set the android:autoLink to the desired settings:

<TextView
    android:autoLink="web|phone"
    ... />

but I can’t find any equivalent for WebView.

Answer 1

I don’t know about any way which would make this work just by changing a setting, but a workaround would be to wait until the web page finishes loading and then do:

yourWebView.loadUrl("javascript:(function(){ /* code that creates links */ })()");

This will inject javaScript into the already loaded web page.
There’s a slightly longer example available here: http://lexandera.com/2009/01/injecting-javascript-into-a-webview/.

You can find the JavaScript source for creating links if you take a look at the source of Linkify script for Greasemonkey (it’s a plugin for Firefox in case you’re not familiar with it). I believe it comes with the default install.