WO2005062587A1

WO2005062587A1 - A method and apparatus for providing caller id information to telephone users

Info

Publication number: WO2005062587A1
Application number: PCT/GB2004/005288
Authority: WO
Inventors: Petter Wiberg
Original assignee: Symbian Software Limited
Priority date: 2003-12-23
Filing date: 2004-12-16
Publication date: 2005-07-07
Also published as: GB2409607A; GB0329834D0

Abstract

A telephone device provides caller ID information to a telephone user in the form of a movie clip. The movie clip may include an audio track, which may be used as a ring tone for the telephone device. The device may include a digital movie camera for recording the movie clip and audio track. In one arrangement an autonomous audio track is used which is dubbed onto the movie clip. The movie clip may also be downloaded to the device from a remote server.

Description

A METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING CALLER ID INFORMATION TO TELEPHONE USERS

The present invention relates to an improved method of providing caller ID information to telephone users, and to an improved wireless communication device for providing caller ID.

The term 'wireless information device' used in this patent specification should be expansively construed to cover any kind of device with two way wireless information capabilities and includes without limitation radio telephones, smart phones, communicators, personal computers, computers and application specific devices. It includes devices able to communicate in any manner over any kind of network, such as GSM or UMTS, CDMA and WCDMA mobile radio, Bluetooth, 802.11 , IrDA etc.

Automatic billing systems for telephone networks have always been able to identify the telephone number of a call being made, as this information is essential for accurate billing. However, passing the identity of a caller over the telephone network and displaying it to the subscriber being called, either as a number or as a name or as both, is a relatively recent development, made possible by the introduction of SS7 (Signalling System 7) by the CCITT (now known as the ITU-T, Telecommunication Standardisation Sector of the International Telecommunications Union, the primary international body for fostering cooperative standards for telecommunications equipment and systems) in 1980. A method for accomplishing this (usually known as caller ID, or CID) is described in United States patent number 4,582,956, granted on 15 April 1986.

It is well known that modern communication devices such as telephones are becoming more sophisticated and able to carry out an ever increasing variety of functions, taking on many of the characteristics of . computing devices. Specifically, the storage of contacts data, such as names and telephone numbers in local database-like storage on these communication devices, is now commonplace. Particularly since the advent of cellular mobile telephony, which introduced consumer-oriented telephone handsets with significant amounts of data storage and computing power, sophisticated operating systems and large colour display screens, this has enabled the basic caller ID idea to be extended in a number of different ways:

• Displaying the name of a caller rather than just the telephone number of the caller by matching the telephone number delivered by the network with a locally stored name. GSM phones have always been provided with this capability as it is built into the Subscriber Identity Module, or SIM, which is contained within the handset). • Displaying a photographic image of a caller rather than just the telephone number of the caller by matching the telephone number delivered by the network with a locally stored digital photographic image. This is known as Picture ID and is found in phones such as the Samsung SPH-A600 and the Motorola V810. • Alerting the subscriber to the identity of the caller by sounding a customized ring tone obtained by matching the telephone number delivered by the network with a locally stored digital sound clip.

The latest generation of mobile telephones, known as 3G phones, have the ability to both record and play movie clips which include both sound and video. The prior art cited above demonstrates that various visual and audible caller identifiers have been separately used in the past. However, despite the fact that digital formats which combine video and sound are in widespread use, such as AVI from Microsoft, MOV from Apple, and the various MPEG formats, nobody has yet proposed a mechanism by which any such combined format can be used to provide caller ID, despite the user benefits.

It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide telephone apparatus which enables personal movie clips associated with a specific contact to be stored locally on the device in the same contacts store as all other personal data, with each movie clip being part of the record relating to the specific contact with whom the movie clip is associated. According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided telephone apparatus comprising a display, a sound generator, a memory for storing movie clips, means for associating a stored telephone number with a movie clip, and means for causing a stored movie clip associated with a stored telephone number to be displayed when the telephone apparatus receives a call from the stored telephone number.

According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of displaying caller ID on a telephone apparatus, the method comprising displaying a movie clip stored on the apparatus and associated with a stored telephone number when the apparatus receives a call from the stored number.

According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided software for causing telephone apparatus according to the first aspect to operate in accordance with a method according to the second aspect.

An embodiment of the present invention will now be described by way of further example only, with reference to telephone apparatus in the form a cellular mobile phone.

A mobile phone device comprises a display screen for displaying an image, a keypad in the form of an array of input keys for the input of data to the device, and a sound generator, such an internal speaker. The mobile phone also includes a digital movie camera for recording movie clips for storage in memory in the device. The device is arranged to run under the control of an operating system such as the Symbian OS™ operating system available from Symbian limited of London England. The device is able to run a number of different applications under the control of the operating system, including a contacts database.

With the contacts database, a user of the device is able to store within a contacts store in the device the telephone numbers of personal contacts, as determined by the user. In this way, when a call is received from a number corresponding to a stored contact, the identity of the contact associated with the call being received is displayed to the user. The user can therefore identify a caller before a call is answered on the device.

The device is also able to record and store movie clips using the integrated digital movie camera and these may be stored in a compressed form using an industry standard format such as AVI from Microsoft, MOV from Apple, and the various MPEG formats, in order to reduce the memory storage requirements. With known modern compression techniques, such as the mpg4 format, a compressed movie clip with sound does not require more memory space than an mp3 encoded tune of the same duration. The device according to the invention also preferably has a player application capable of handling the format used to store the movie clips. An implementation is possible using separate audio and video players, but a single movie clip player is the preferred implementation as it is both efficient and elegant by comparison.

When an incoming call is detected, the network provides the subscriber with the number of the caller. This is then used as a key in the device to look up the relevant record in the contacts store. The device is however also provided with the capability to associate a caller number with a stored movie clip. Thus, when the device locates the record in the contacts store matching the telephone number provided by the network, the stored movie clip can be played to a user on the display of the device. Playing the movie clip provides, in a single step, both a ring tone customised for the particular caller and also a visual confirmation of the identity of the caller.

Editing or dubbing over the soundtrack on the movie clip to ensure that the sound at the start is suitable for an audible alarm is an additional step likely to be performed by most users.

Many ways of providing caller ID are envisaged with the present invention. For example, the movie clip may be a silent movie clip without an audio recording, or the audio recording can be an autonomous audio track which is dubbed onto the movie clip. The audio track, whether recorded as part of the video image or subsequently dubbed onto the movie clip can be used as the ring tone or at least part of the ring tone for the device. Hence, for example, when a call from a stored contact is received, the ring tone may be made up of an initial part in the form of a standard ring tone followed by an audio message from the contact used in conjunction with the movie clip associated with that contact. Another optional step may be to overlay the movie clip with the name of the caller, and this combination may be used with or without the audio track.

The present invention is considered to provide many advantages over the prior art, such as • Visual recognition of video images is quicker and more intuitive than visual recognition of names or flashing still images, particularly when a device is used in a silent mode. • People with poor eyesight and or poor hearing will be better able to identify a caller from the playing of a movie clip than by any other method, because the number of cues to the identity of a caller are so much greater than with a text prompt or a still picture and a loosely coupled ring tone. • The additional step would be to overlay the movie clip with the caller's name depends for its utility on the same insight. Some people have a poor memory for faces, some have a poor memory for names, some have a poor memory for both. Providing the maximum number of cues to recognition provides a clear benefit in situations where simply knowing the identity of the caller does not provide sufficient context for recognition and recollection of the nature of the contact. • Embedding movie clips in contacts data enables a personalised ring tone to be transmitted along with the data included in electronic business cards using existing standards such as the industry standard Versit vcard format; separate audio cannot be included in electronic business cards in the same way. • All this comes at very little cost; activating a movie player in response to an incoming call is no more complicated in software terms than activating a ring tone, and modern methods of video compression can result in memory requirements for movie clips which are not significantly greater than many currently supported audio-only formats used for ring tones. • It is also the case that at least in its initial phase of introduction, using this invention is a bold and interesting fashion statement.

Although the present invention has been described with reference to particular embodiments, it will be appreciated that modifications may be effected whilst remaining within the scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims. For example, the invention has been described with reference to the use of a movie clip of a recording of a contact associated with a particular number in the contacts store. However, the movie clip may also comprise a movie clip downloaded from a remote server in the same fashion as the currently available ring tones. These downloaded movie clips may be used alone or in combination with the movie clips recorded using the integrated digital camera.

Claims

1. Telephone apparatus comprising a display, a sound generator, a memory for storing movie clips, means for associating a stored telephone number with a movie clip, and means for causing a stored movie clip associated with a stored telephone number to be displayed when the telephone apparatus receives a call from the stored telephone number.

2. Telephone apparatus according to claim 1 wherein the movie clip is stored in a compressed format.

3. Telephone apparatus according to claim 1 or 2 wherein the movie clip is stored using an industry standard format, including but not limited to Microsoft AVI, Apple MOV and/or an MPEG format.

4. Telephone apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the movie clip comprises a video recording of a contact associated with the stored telephone number.

5. Telephone apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 3 wherein the movie clip comprises a movie clip downloaded to the device from a remote server.

6. Telephone apparatus according to claim 4 or 5 wherein the movie clip further comprises an audio recording of the voice of the contact associated with the stored telephone number.

7. Telephone apparatus according to claim 6, when appendant to claim 4, wherein the movie clip and the audio recording comprise simultaneous recordings.

8. Telephone apparatus according to any one of claims 4 to 6 wherein the audio recording comprises an autonomous audio track.

9. Telephone apparatus according to any one of claims 6 to 8 wherein the audio recording is used as a ring tone for the apparatus.

10. Telephone apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims wherein an audio clip independent of the video recording is used as a ring tone for the apparatus.

11. Telephone apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the telephone number and the movie clip are stored in a common database.

12. Telephone apparatus according to claim 11 wherein the database comprises further personal contact information relating to a contact associated with the stored telephone number.

13. Telephone apparatus according to claim 12 wherein the further personal contact information comprises data in the form of an electronic business card.

14. Telephone apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims comprising recording means for recording the movie clip.

15. Telephone apparatus according to any one of the preceding claims comprising a cellular wireless information device.

16. A method of displaying caller ID on a telephone apparatus, the method comprising displaying a movie clip stored on the apparatus and associated with a stored telephone number when the apparatus receives a call from the stored number.

17. A method according to claim 16 wherein the movie clip is selected to comprise a movie clip stored on the device in a compressed format.

18. A method according to claim 16 or 17 wherein the movie clip is selected to comprise a video recording of a contact associated with the stored number.

19. A method according to claim 16 or 17 wherein the movie clip is selected to further comprise an audio recording of the voice of a contact associated with the stored number.

20. A method according to claim 19 wherein the audio recording is used as a ring tone for the telephone apparatus when a call is received from the stored number.

21. Software for causing telephone apparatus according to any one of claims 1 to 15 to operate in accordance with a method as claimed in any one of claims16 to 20.