This invention relates generally to cellular telephones.
Existing cellular telephones come in a variety of price ranges. Cell phones at the bottom price ranges come with very rudimentary features. For example, basic cell phones may include a baseband processor or a digital signal processor, but they may not include an application processor to provide advanced features, such as address books, phone directories, and advanced call features, to mention a few examples. The hope of the cellular telephone providers is that ultimately the cell phone users will progress to ever more advanced cellular telephones.
However, when a cellular telephone user decides to upgrade to a more advanced cellular telephone, his or her existing cellular telephone becomes largely useless. The market for resale of basic cellular telephones is relatively limited.
Therefore, it would be desirable to enable cellular telephones that may be both mass produced and user configurable.
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In some embodiments, this slideably received module 12a may include a display 14a and a variety of other upgrade components including upgraded memory, an upgraded processor, an upgraded display, as well as upgraded software in some embodiments. Thus, by simply replacing one module 12a with another module, the cellular telephone 10 may be upgraded to attain new and/or different functionalities.
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A card 66 may also be coupled into the bus 50 through contacts 68a and 68b. The contacts 68a and 68b may be slideable contacts so that the card 66 simply plugs into the connectors 70a and 70b that in turn couple the card 66 electrically to the bus 50. In one embodiment, the contacts 68 may be provided on the rear side of the module 12a.
The card 66, in one embodiment, may include a general purpose or applications processor 54 and a storage 58 for the processor 54. Thus, in some embodiments, a variety of additional functions, beyond simply completing cellular telephone calls, may be provided using the card 66. For example, the general purpose processor 54 and storage 58 may include software to implement personal information manager (PIM) functions, such as address books, games, scheduling, calculator functions and the like. Thus, the user may simply replace an existing module 12 with an upgrade module 12 and/or provide a new upgrade card 66 that provides additional processing capabilities.
As a result, in some embodiments, users may custom configure their cell phones to include that hardware and software that the user actually wants. In addition, a user may purchase a relatively basic cellular telephone and then may upgrade with those capabilities the user desires.
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For example, a cellular telephone with a PC card can use an Ethernet adapter to plug into a local area network, for example, through an 802.11 wireless connection for fast access to data (IEEE Standard 802.11 available from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, New York, N.Y.). In addition, memory cards, such as flash memory cards that are either programmable or pre-programmed with desired data, may be plugged into the cellular telephone 10.
In some embodiments, the cellular telephone 10 may receive memories that were programmed to store data at other processor-based devices, such a laptop or desktop computer. The memory can then simply be removed from the other processor-based system and plugged into the cellular telephone 10 to provide enhanced features for the cellular telephone 10. This operation may enhance the use of the cellular telephone 10 because it is not necessary to use a limited keyboard 16 to enter the data. Instead, the data can be loaded through a more fully featured processor-based system. The pre-programmed memory can then be plugged into the phone 10.
While the present invention has been described with respect to a limited number of embodiments, those skilled in the art will appreciate numerous modifications and variations therefrom. It is intended that the appended claims cover all such modifications and variations as fall within the true spirit and scope of this present invention.
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 09974588 | Oct 2001 | US |
Child | 10964259 | Oct 2004 | US |