HAND-HELD THUMB TOUCH TYPABLE ASCII/UNICODE KEYPAD FOR A REMOTE, MOBILE TELEPHONE OR A PDA

• US 20090179780A1
• Filed: 09/07/2006
• Published: 07/16/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 09/09/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Innomedia Technologies Pvt., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Innomedia Technologies Pvt., Ltd.
• Inventors: Tambe, Mohan
• Application Number:
  US12/066,213
• Publication Number:
  US 20090179780A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 341/23
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0234 using switches operable in different directions
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0237 using prediction or retrieval techniques

Abstract

A hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard that has an alphanumeric keypad having multiple quad keys and multiple dual keys, and a navigation keypad having multiple dual keys and single-function keys. Each corner of one of the quad keys or dual keys of the alphanumeric keypad allow a user to type a separate character. In addition, a homing key is located at the center of the alphanumeric keypad. An optional pointing device and an adjustable hand-strap can also be added to the device.

Claims

1. A hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard comprising:

an alphanumeric keypad having multiple quad keys and multiple dual keys;

a navigation keypad having multiple dual keys and single-function keys;

wherein each corner of one of said quad keys or dual keys of the alphanumeric keypad allow a user to type a separate character; and

wherein a quad key at a center of the alphanumeric keypad is a homing key.

2. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein the alphanumeric keypad includes nine quad keys arranged in a rectangular array and three dual keys slightly recessed below the quad keys.

3. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein:

the multiple dual keys of the navigation keypad comprises one “

UP/DOWN”

key for volume and one “

UP/DOWN”

key for browsing one of a channel or a page; and

the single-function keys include four direction arrow-keys with a central “

OK”

key, four keys in a diagonal direction from the “

OK”

key, one ON/OFF key, one PDA key, and one MUTE key.

4. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein a short press of a said key and a long press of the same said key of said alphanumeric keypad outputs of different characters.

5. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein Arabic numbers are located on the top-left hand corners of the respective quad keys of said alphanumeric keypad.

6. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein the homing quad key further comprises:

the digit ‘

5’

in the top-left corner;

a ‘

SPACE’

character, below the digit ‘

5’

,

wherein the surface of the SPACE character is raised.

7. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 5, wherein the letters of the English Alphabet are consecutively accommodated in remaining corners of the quad keys.

8. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 7 wherein a first press of the English alphabet key outputs a lower-case letter, while a second longer press of the same key outputs an upper-case of the letter.

9. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 2, wherein a middle dual key on the alphanumeric keypad contains the digit ‘

0’ and

the “

DOT”

character.

10. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 2, wherein the left dual key on the alphanumeric keypad accommodates BACKSPACE and SHIFT functions, and the right dual key on accommodates the SYMBOL and ENTER/TAB functions.

11. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 10 wherein the SHIFT key followed by another key outputs a punctuation character.

12. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 10 wherein pressing said SYMBOL key followed by at least another key outputs a related Extended ASCII or UNICODE character.

13. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 10 wherein a pressing the SHIFT key for a predetermined duration one of sets and resets the CAPS Lock LED indicator and changes the default case of the English alphabet.

14. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 10 wherein a pressing the SYMBOL key for a predetermined duration one of sets and resets the SCRIPT Lock LED indicator and shifts between a “

Script”

overlay, or and a default English alphabet overlay.

15. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 14, wherein the Script overlay allows a non-Roman script, to be typed.

16. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein, where thumb touch-typing is enabled on the navigation keypad.

17. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, further comprising an adjustable hand-strap configured to accept one to four fingers of user'"'"'s hand, wherein the palm of the user remains outside the strap.

18. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein all said keys are accessible by a thumb of a hand holding the keyboard.

19. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a pointing device.

20. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 1, wherein an Arabic number is located on the left side of a respective said dual key of said alphanumeric keypad.

21. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 12, wherein the related Extended ASCII or UNICODE character is at least one of a trademark symbol or an European character with a diacritic mark.

22. The hand held thumb touch typable ASCII/UNICODE keyboard as claimed in claim 15, wherein said non-Roman script is an Indian script.