$string =~ s/^<[^>]+>//; $string =~ s/<[^>]+>$//;

No, please don't use regular expressions to parse XML...

An alternative to what poj showed with XML::LibXML::DocumentFragment:

use warnings;
use strict;
use XML::LibXML;

my $doc = XML::LibXML->load_xml(string =>
    q{<doc><text>From mobile, <ph1 i="1" type="33" x="1"/>dial<ph2 i="
+1"/> this number:</text></doc>});

for my $node ($doc->findnodes('/doc/text')) {
    my $frag = $doc->createDocumentFragment;
    $frag->appendChild($_->cloneNode(1)) for $node->childNodes;
    print $frag, "\n";
}

__END__

From mobile, <ph1 i="1" type="33" x="1"/>dial<ph2 i="1"/> this number:
[download]