CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is filed under 35 U.S.C. § 371 as the U.S. National Phase of Application No. PCT/IB2019/000418 entitled “METHOD FOR OPERATING A DEVICE FOR HANDLING A PHONE CALL” and filed Mar. 28, 2019, and which claims priority to PCT/CN2018/081263 filed Mar. 30, 2018, each of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety.

BACKGROUND

Technological Field

The field of this invention is that of devices such as mobiles phones. More particularly, the invention relates to a method for operating such a device when receiving a phone call.

Description of the Related Technology

With devices such as mobile phones, it is common to receive a phone call from a calling party, and not to wish to answer it for various reasons (for example when the calling party is an advertiser or when it is not the proper time and/or place to answer the call).

Usually, the phone displays the calling phone number (or directly the name of the calling party if this number is already registered in a contact list of the phone), and from this information the user takes the decision to answer or reject the call (for instance by pressing a green or a red button the phone's interface).

The user can further subscribe to a “yellow pages” service which automatically searches for un unknown calling number, so that the phone may for instance display advertisement warning if it the incoming phone call is identified as being an advertisement.

However, the user must still take the decision to answer or reject the call and press the corresponding button.

For avoiding such handling, the user has only either the possibility to block some phone numbers (calls from these phone numbers will be automatically rejected) or the possibility (for example in iOS operating system) to use a “Do Not Disturb” mode (during a given time frame, all calls except emergency ones from a predetermined list of contacts will be rejected).

These two mechanisms, while somehow efficient, are limited, in particular with respect for advertisements and other unsolicited calls. Indeed, unknown or hidden numbers cannot be blocked by the first mechanism, and the second mechanism does not only block unsolicited calls and thus cannot be permanently turned on.

There is therefore a need for improving the user experience so as to avoid bothering the user with unsolicited calls, without risking the user to miss some unexpected but important calls.

SUMMARY OF CERTAIN INVENTIVE ASPECTS

For these purposes, the present invention provides a method for operating a device characterized in that it comprises the following steps of, performed by a processing unit of the device:(a) receiving a phone call from a calling party;(b) determining an action to be performed by the device among a predetermined list of actions related to the handling of a phone call, as a function at least of identity information about the calling party;(c) performing said determined action for handling said phone call.

Such specific and dynamic action determination allows complex and self-learning of the user behavior for automatically dealing at the same time with unsolicited calls and unavailability time periods.

Preferred but non limiting features of the present invention are as follow:said predetermined list of actions related to the handling of a phone call comprises at least one of the following actions:answering the phone call;rejecting the phone call;ringing the device.in said predetermined list of actions related to the handling of a phone call, the action of rejecting the phone call is subdivided in at least the following actions:forwarding the phone call to a voicemail;rejecting the phone call without forwarding it to a voicemail;The action of ringing the phone comprises informing a user of the device through a user interface of the phone call and prompting the user to decide whether to answer it or to reject the phone call;step (a) comprises receiving data for establishing a phone call between the calling party and the device, and determining from the received data the identity information about the calling party;step (b) comprises processing said identity information for attempting to identify a contact;processing said identity information for attempting to identify a contact comprises searching for the identity information in a contact list stored in a memory of the device and/or searching for the identity information in a remote directory;the identity information is a caller ID or the indication that no caller ID is available;at least one of said actions, in the predetermined list of actions, has been predetermined (a0) on the basis at least of an action performed by the user in relation with a previous phone call from said calling party;by default the predetermined action is ringing the device, said predetermined action being learnt as a function of how the user handle the phone call when the device is ringing;the predetermined action is further determined as a function of contextual data;the contextual data comprises acceleration data detected by an acceleration sensor of the device, wherein the action to be determined during step (a0) is learnt to be directly rejecting the phone call when the user has not answered the previous phone call while the acceleration data detected during the previous phone call are representative of the user having taken the device.

In a second aspect, the invention provides an electronic device comprising a processing unit configured to implement the following steps, when the electronic device receives a phone call from a calling party:determining an action to be performed by the device among a predetermined list of actions related to the handling of a phone call, as a function at least of identity information about the calling party;performing said determined action for handling said phone call.

According to a third and a fourth aspects, the invention provides a computer program product, comprising code instructions for executing a method according to the first aspect for operating a device; and a computer-readable medium, on which is stored a computer program product comprising code instructions for executing a method according to the first aspect for operating a device.

