DE20017787U1 - Direct tone dialing for portable electronic devices with an integrated database for telephone numbers - Google Patents

Description

Description

Direct tone dialing for portable electronic devices with integrated telephone number database

State of the art

For some time now, there have been many portable electronic devices ("handhelds") in which the user can store telephone numbers and have them displayed while on the move. Examples include: mini notebooks, electronic databases, organizers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), wristwatches and mobile phones. If you now want to establish a connection to a number stored there on a telephone device, you first search for this number, which is then usually only shown on the (LCD) display of the device, and enter this number manually.

problem

The telephone number displayed there must then be read by the user under sometimes adverse conditions - such as poor lighting - and entered correctly on a telephone device using a keypad or a rotary dial. This can also be the case for mobile phones if a connection is to be made via the landline due to incomplete network coverage, for cost reasons or because of the desire to establish an anonymous connection.

Solution

The so-called tone dialing system has become the standard worldwide for connecting telephone calls. In this system, each of the numbers from 0 to 9 is assigned a short tone with a different frequency. These dial tones are generated electronically during the dialing process, but they can also be generated as an acoustic signal outside the telephone system and picked up by the microphone of the telephone handset and then forwarded to the exchange. The latter is even possible with older telephone systems that still use the pulse dialing system.

Since the above-mentioned devices in which the telephone numbers are stored usually already contain a transmitter for acoustic signals, or an acoustic piezo transmitter with the necessary frequency range can be installed with little effort, this invention enables a significant simplification of the dialing process.
The present invention consists in additionally

to be shown on the display via an acoustic transmitter as an acoustic signal coded according to the tone dialing method described above. If the acoustic transmitter is positioned sufficiently close to the microphone, the telephone number is then dialed without any further keypad input.

When establishing a connection abroad or from a telephone system, it is advantageous if the tone dialling device allows an additional area code to be entered in addition to the telephone number stored in the database via a simple keypad entry (e.g. The telephone number in the database 089 1234567 (Germany) is output in conjunction with the location USA as the tone dialling sequence 011 49 89 1234567. The same applies to the use of prepaid card services and other telephone services.

Benefits achieved

This significantly simplifies the dialing process: instead of having to enter the telephone number manually, which is slow and prone to errors, you now only have to start the acoustic output using the tone dialing method and position the acoustic transmitter near the microphone of the telephone device while the tone dialing sequence is being output.

Description of an implementation example

An embodiment of the invention is explained with reference to drawing 1.

The electronic device 1, which contains the telephone data 1b, which are called up via the keyboard 1a and shown on the display 1c, is provided with an additional device 1d, which outputs the telephone number to be dialed acoustically coded in the tone dialing method via an acoustic transmitter 1e (dynamic loudspeaker or piezo transmitter).

Instead of manually entering the number to be dialed on the keypad 2a of the telephone device 2, the acoustic transmitter 1e now only has to be positioned in front of the microphone 2c of the handset 2b.

Claims (2)

1. Portable electronic devices with an integrated database for telephone numbers, which contain an additional device, characterized in that the telephone number to be dialled is output in coded form by an acoustic transmitter using the tone dialling method exclusively or in addition to being shown on a display. 2. A tone dialing device for portable electronic devices according to protection claim 1, characterized in that the tone dialing device supplements the master number in the telephone database with a corresponding area code for tone dialing via a simple input of the location or the telephone service.