US 6594503 B1 A communication device (200), such as a cellular
mobile phone or a cordless phone, has a dial unit (208) for
communication with a base station. An input device for dialing a
phone number which forwards a coded dial signal (215) to the
dial unit (208) is implemented as an optical character
recognition (OCR) scanner (210) that reads phone numbers (202)
from a printed or hand-written original (201). Optionally,
especially for recognizing hand-writing, the scanner (210) sends
graphical representations of input data to the base station that
obtains the code dial signals by an external processor. 1.
Communication device having a dial unit to establish
communication via a communication channel, said communication
device characterized by a built-in optical character recognition
reader to receive a dial identification from an original,
wherein said reader collects image data of said dial
identification by being in a predetermined distance from said
original during a predetermined data collecting time. 2.