This invention relates generally to semi-automated dialer system and method to provide fast and efficient dialing from a mixed entry sequence. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for determining intended entry from a mixed dialing sequence that includes both numeric and non-numeric input.
In mobile communications appliances equipped with a deterministic input device, such as a QWERTY keyboard, the large number of keys may be a disadvantage. To keep the number of physical keys to a smaller number, it is common to find that the numeric keys share the same physical keys as some of the text symbol keys. For example, in one such implementation on a Windows Smartphone®, the E, R, T and Y are also labeled 0, 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
The particular allocation of numerical keys on the alphabetic keypad is flexible by design, but most implementers attempt to construct a layout that approximates the numeric layout typical of a telephone keypad.
This ambiguous structure results in design choices that are contextually driven and it is usual to find that the keyboard operates either in numeric mode or in text symbol mode. However, there is limited interactivity between the two modes. Usually it is left to the user to determine which mode is desired.
Current dialer applications which signals a numeric string to the network system via the appliance's transceiver is ill conditioned to send strings that are not entirely numbers.
Similarly the fact that the text symbols normally allocated to the touch-tone keypad have no resemblance to the way that numbers are allocated to the qwerty layout results in an unexpected complexity for the typical user. For example, in voice-mail systems it is usual for a caller to be asked to identify the recipient by entering a numeric string that ambiguously spells their surname or first part thereof. If there is an ambiguous possibility where more than one recipient could be intended, the system may resolve this interactively with the user. It is extraordinarily difficult for a user of a qwerty keyboard labeled with a group of numbers, having no other labeling to show the possible ambiguous meaning of the numeric keys in the context of a telephony application, to perform this entry task accurately. This is further exacerbated by the fact that the staggered key layout of a QWERTY keyboard lends a distortion to the numeric labeled keys, as if the standard telephony pad were not rectangular but more a parallelogram shape, which further complicates the ergonomic task.
It is therefore apparent that an urgent need exists for an improved system and method for semi-automated dialing using mixed sequences for input that is both accurate and efficient. This solution would fulfill a long felt, yet unmet, need for dialing applications that is able to effectively provide dialing when provided input that contains both numeric and non numeric input; thereby increasing effectiveness of dialing and number entry on a mobile device.