Mobile personal communication appliances are commonplace. In general, numbers are entered and used to dial a phone number or used as an address or short code to access certain services. Phone numbers that are used frequently are often stored on the appliance (i.e. “locally”) so that they may be easily retrieved and then dialed without entering the entire number. In this manner, fewer key-presses may be used to identify a desired phone number. For example, if the user's office phone number is “848-1510”, then upon pressing the number “8” followed by the number “4”, the entire phone number 848-1510 may be displayed to the user for selection. If the user selects the displayed number, then the number is dialed automatically by the appliance.
In most modern cell phones, a common feature is that a limited number of telephone numbers may be stored in locations that are paired with some of the keys on the keypad so that when a particular key is pressed and held for a period of time—colloquially a “long key-press”—the corresponding telephone number may be recalled, along with other relevant data if present, and a call initiated to that stored number without further action by the user. For example, it is possible to program a cell phone such that pressing and holding the key corresponding to the letter “s” will retrieve the phone number for the user's secretary, and may even dial the secretary's phone number without further key presses.
Another routine use for a long key-press arises when the multi-tap method of text entry is employed on an appliance. In the multi-tap method, one or more of the keys on the appliance are each assigned several symbols, and the user identifies which of the symbols corresponding to a particular key is desired by pressing the key one or more times in quick succession, until the number of times the key is pressed corresponds to the symbol desired by the user. For example, if a key is assigned to allow the user to identify the characters “a”, “b”, “c” or “2”, and the user desires to identify the letter “b”, then the key may be pressed twice in quick succession, since “b” is the second character identified on the key. Also in a standard multi-tap configuration, a long key-press may indicate the user's desire to enter the numeric assignment of the key rather than a non-numeric symbol corresponding to the key.
In some prior art systems, if an ambiguous entry is made using the keys of a standard telephone keypad, then a system according to the prior art would present the user with a numeric string corresponding to the pressed keys, and may also present the user with non-numeric strings corresponding to the pressed keys. Further, in accordance with the prior art, the appliance may display items related to the string—such items may include icons for software applications or abstracts. The user must then move a cursor to the desired object on the screen and press the “enter” key to select that object.
In a product offered by the Zi Corporation of Calgary, Alberta, Canada called “Qix”, a user is able to retrieve information related to the entered sequence of keys. It should be noted that Qix uses an “active idle screen” technology to reduce click distance (defined below). As such, the entered sequence of keys may be used to identify strings and corresponding uses of those strings that may be desired by the user. The strings may be provided to the user for selection, for example, by moving a cursor to a desired one of the strings and selecting that string. In the Qix product, strings may be identified to the user as a telephone number and once selected, the number is dialed. Strings also may be identified as a proxy for a telephone number or related to an internal function of the appliance. Also, selecting a string may invoke a program and the entered string or its related data may sometimes be used as a parameter for further work. One drawback to such a system is that a particular series of characters may have multiple uses. As such, the same series of characters may need to be listed more than once, each listing corresponding to a different potential use. Since the screen on a mobile appliance that is used to display information is small, multiple listings of the same characters occupy valuable space. In addition, multiple listings of the same characters require the user to move the cursor through the multiple listings, which can detract from the user's ability to quickly identify desired information and uses of that information.