When engaged in a telephone conversation, cellular phone users are typically confronted with the need to alert the person with whom they are speaking that, because others are nearby, the conversation cannot continue in privacy or without annoying others. In that case, the very act of explaining the problem can itself be awkward or impractical. In consequence, it would be desirable to incorporate into a cellular telephone the ability to transmit a pre-recorded message to the remote party by a pressing a button or actuating some other control on the cellular telephone.
Cellular telephones with built in audio recording and playback capabilities have been developed for performing functions including the recording and playback of dictation and telephone conversations, as well as the playback of pre-recorded announcements used to implement voice mail systems. Where such the voice recording and playback devices are already present in the cellular telephone, the needed additional functionality contemplated by the present invention can be added at little additional cost.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,063 issued to Parvulescu et al. describes a voice scratchpad implemented in a wireless telephone that allows the user to record important information gathered during a phone conversation. The wireless telephone includes signal processing means and memory means for recording at least one message or memo, which is spoken over the telephone. The telephone also includes controls for initiating the recording of such a memo and for retrieving and replaying the memo. Indexing may be included which allows the system to record and replay a plurality of memos. The user of the phone can thus record important information in a memo on the voice scratchpad without the need for paper or the concentration and effort required for writing.
Automatic telephone answering systems have also been developed for use with cellular phones which allow the cellular phone operator to place the phone in an automatic answering mode in which the phone answers the incoming call and automatically transmits a message to transmit specific instructions to the caller at the distant telephone. U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,957 issued to A. H. Heidari describes a cellular phone which includes a prompt transmitter which may be used to advise the person at a distant telephone to wait a moment while the cellular phone operator proceeds to another location wherein it is appropriate to lift the receiver and begin speaking. The prompt feature avoids the situation wherein a telephone caller may hang up prematurely before the intended called person has a chance to pick up the receiver and begin conversing.
The foregoing systems do not, however, allow the cellular phone operator to employ the cellular phone's pushbutton controls to select and transmit a selected pre-recorded message to a caller during a conversation. In addition, it would be desirable to allow the cellular phone operator to transmit a repertoire of short response messages (e.g. “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and “I don't know.”) that allow the remote party to ask questions to and then obtain responses from the cellular phone operator without requiring the cellular phone operator to speak.
A related problem occurs when a cellular phone user is unable to complete a call to send important information to a remote party before the cellular phone user needs to attend a meeting or otherwise be unable to conveniently complete the call. In that instance, it would be desirable to record a message to be transmitted later, along with a telephone number to be called, so that the cellular phone can later automatically place a call to that number and transmit the recorded message to the answering party, without requiring attention from the cellular phone operator.
In some cases, the need to transmit a spoken message from a cellular phone in private cannot be foreseen. It would accordingly also be desirable to provide means for storing a keyboarded message (which may consist of only one or just a few words) as text, and then employing speech synthesis to convert the keyboarded message into a spoken audio transmission that is sent to the remote party.