GB2377125A

GB2377125A - User-configurable light display for a mobile telephone

Info

Publication number: GB2377125A
Application number: GB0115749A
Authority: GB
Inventors: Mathew Peter Riley
Original assignee: NEC Technologies UK Ltd
Current assignee: NEC Technologies UK Ltd
Priority date: 2001-06-27
Filing date: 2001-06-27
Publication date: 2002-12-31
Anticipated expiration: 2021-06-27
Also published as: GB0115749D0; GB2377125B

Abstract

A mobile telephone is configured to display a light sequence which is configurable by a user. The mobile telephone includes a composition function, such as a computer program executed by a processor to allow a user to define a sequence of lights for display by an LED. The composition function is accessed by a menu system. On receipt of a telephone call, a previously composed light sequence associated with a caller identity is displayed. The use of such a user-configured sequence rather than selecting from a plurality of stored sequences reduces the image of memory capacity.

Description

CONFIGURABLE MOBILE TELEPHONE LIGHT DISPLAY FIELD OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a mobile telephone, and in particular to a mobile telephone with a configurable display.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Mobile telephones are now well-known and widely used in society. In general, the components of mobile telephones are well-known and include a keypad for dialling telephone numbers and executing other functions of the telephone, microphone, loudspeaker and a liquid crystal display (LCD). In addition, mobile telephones may also include other user indication devices, such as vibration units or lamps such as LEDs. Mobile telephones are generally known as handheld portables (HHPs).

With the increasing number of telephone calls received on HHPs, users require ever more sophisticated ways of identifying callers. These now include displaying the caller's name, using different ring tones or providing different display sequences of LED flashing lights.

However, with the increase in such user indications, there is an accompanying increase in the memory requirement within a mobile telephone.

We have appreciated the need to efficiently indicate a caller's identity to a user of a mobile telephone, whilst avoiding wasting memory storage space.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION T : n a broad aspect, the invention relates to configuring a light display in a mobile telephone. The invention is defined in the independent claims to which reference is now directed. Preferred features are see out in the dependent claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES An embodiment of the invention will now be described by way of example only, and with reference to the accompanying figures, in which : Figure 1 : shows the functional components of a mobile telephone according to the invention, Figure 2: shows the operation of the mobile telephone according to the invention, Figure 3: shows the display of a mobile telephone in a configuration mode according to the invention.

DESCRIPTION OF A PREFERRED EMBODIMENT The telephone embodying the invention allows users to create their own light display sequences for display on an LED or other lamp, and to associate each such sequence with a caller identity. This allows many different patterns to be created, but does not require a large number of predefined patterns to be stored in memory. The user thus uses as much memory in the mobile telephone as required for the patterns created, but does not waste memory.

The embodying mobile telephone shown in Figure 1 comprises a keypad 6 for inputting numbers and operating a menu system, a microphone 4 for receiving voice for transmission or receiving commands and a loudspeaker 2.

These all communicate with a main processor 12 which governs the operation of the telephone, and passes data for transmission to a radio unit 10 which transmits the voice and other data to the mobile telephone network. In addition, the processor communicates with a display 22, which is typically a LCD for displaying menu information, telephone numbers and caller names and a light display, here a single LED 20 for displaying sequences of light flashes of different colours. The processor 12 executes programs stored in memory 8 to control operation of all the telephone functions.

The mobile telephone when configured for use also includes a subscriber identity module (SIM) 14 which includes a SIM processor 16 and SIM memory 18. The SIM 14 contains the instructions required to identify the user to the telephone and to provide access to the network via unique identification codes.

The SIM 14 is generally also used to store a phone book in the form of a database of telephone numbers and associated names. The telephone book is stored both on the SIM and HHP to allow users to easily retain the database when purchasing a new telephone. The SIM can simply be transferred to the new telephone. In addition, the HHP memory 18 stores light sequences for display by the LED 20, each of which may be associated with one or more user identities in the telephone book database. However, as previously noted, the HHP memory 18 has limited capacity, and so memory is a premium.

The process for composing and storing light display sequences is shown in Figure 2. A light display sequence

can be any sequence of coloured lights, such as a single flashing colour, a sequence of different colours or, a single colour displayed continuously. In effect, the continuous display of a single colour is a sequence of repeated displays of the same colour.

The user enters the LED composer function at 30 by selecting the composition function 50 from a menu on the display The composition function 50 itself is a program which may be stored either in the main memory or same memory. First, at 32, a user selects a colour by depressing an associated key The composition function then displays the associated colour at 34 and stores this in a buffer at 36-The user can then depress another choice of key (or the same key again) and the colour is again displayed and stored in buffer at 36. When a user has finished composing the colour sequence, this is transmitted to a non-volatile store at 42. The nonvolatile store may be within the SIM memory or main memory The composition process then finishes.

Subsequently, on receipt of a call at 38, a caller line identity is extracted at 40 and compared with a caller line identity associated with the colour sequence in memory at 42 and the appropriate colour sequence pattern selected and displayed at 44.

The menu system for accessing the composition function is shown in Figure 3. The application displays a key of colours mapping to numbers on the numeric keypad. When starting the composition process, the user is prompted for a colour (by numeric value), this procedure is repeated up to a predefined maximum, or until the user stops the process whichever is soonest. If the user desires a longer duration of any one colour of LED, then placing multiples of the same colour together will achieve this affect.

The user is then offered the choice of playing back the composed pattern, or saving the pattern to memory, such as non-volatile store.

Claims

CLAIMS 1. A mobile telephone configured to display a light display sequence on receipt of a telephone call, comprising : - a light display for displaying the sequence of lights on receipt of a telephone call, the light display sequence being associated with a caller identity ; a store for storing a plurality of different light display sequences and caller identifies each light display sequence being associated with a respective caller identity ; and a composition function arranged to receive a user input to define a plurality of different light display sequences.
2. A mobile telephone according to claim 1, wherein the user input comprises key presses and the composition function comprises a select key function for generating a signal to display a given colour for each respective key.
3. A mobile telephone according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the light display is a colour lamp configurable to display a plurality of different colours in a predetermined sequence.
4. A mobile telephone substantially as herein described with reference to the accompanying figures.
5. A computer program comprising program code which when executed on a mobile telephone processor constitutes the composition function of a mobile telephone of any preceding claim.