CHARACTER INPUT METHOD OF MOBILE TERMINAL

• US 20100004030A1
• Filed: 05/04/2009
• Published: 01/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/01/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc. (LG Corporation)
• Original Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc. (LG Corporation)
• Inventors: NAM, Seung-Woo
• Granted Patent: US 8,265,704 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/566
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2203/04808 Several contacts: gestures triggering a specific function, e.g. scrolling, zooming, right-click, when the user establishes several contacts with the surface simultaneously; e.g. using several fingers or a combination of fingers and pen
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0235 using chord techniques G06F3/0234 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0236 using selection techniques to select from displayed items
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04883 for inputting data by handwriting, e.g. gesture or text

Abstract

A mobile terminal includes a display screen to display a screen image of a particular character and a virtual keypad, and to detect touch inputs; and a controller to detect a first touch input of touching the particular character and a second touch input of touching a particular key of the virtual keypad, and to control display of display characters on respective key buttons of the virtual keypad, the display characters having at least one attribute of the particular character, if the first and second inputs are a multi-touch. Because a font of particular character is applied to the display character of the virtual keypad or to a newly input character, characters or numbers can be easily input using the display screen of the mobile terminal.

Claims

1. A character input method of a mobile terminal, the method comprising:

detecting a first touch input of touching a screen image of a particular character displayed on a display screen of the mobile terminal;

detecting a second touch input of touching a screen image of a particular key of a virtual keypad displayed on the display screen of the mobile terminal; and

displaying display characters on respective key buttons of the virtual keypad, the display characters having at least one attribute of the particular character, if the first and second touch inputs are a multi-touch.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein, in displaying the display characters on respective key buttons of the virtual keypad, one of a font, a size and a color of the display characters on each key button of the virtual keypad is changed according to the at least one attribute of the particular character.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the particular key of the virtual keypad is used to copy the at least one attribute of the particular character to the display characters on the respective key buttons of the virtual keypad.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein time periods of the respective first and second touch inputs overlap for the multi-touch.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the particular character is a number, and the display characters include each one of 0 to 9.

6. A mobile terminal, comprising:

a display screen configured to display a screen image of a particular character and a virtual keypad, and to detect touch inputs; and

a controller configured to detect a first touch input of touching the particular character and a second touch input of touching a particular key of the virtual keypad, and to control display of display characters on respective key buttons of the virtual keypad, the display characters having at least one attribute of the particular character, if the first and second inputs are a multi-touch.

7. The mobile terminal of claim 6, wherein the controller changes one of a font, a size and a color of the display characters on each key button of the virtual keypad according to the at least one attribute of the particular character.

8. The mobile terminal of claim 6, wherein the particular key of the virtual keypad is used to copy the at least one attribute of the particular character to the display characters on the respective key buttons of the virtual keypad.

9. The mobile terminal of claim 6, wherein time periods of the respective first and second touch inputs overlap for the multi-touch.

10. The mobile terminal of claim 6, wherein the particular character is a number, and the display characters include each one of 0 to 9.

11. A character input method of a mobile terminal, the method comprising:

detecting a first touch input of touching a screen image of a particular character displayed on a display screen of the mobile terminal;

detecting a second touch input of touching a screen image of a particular key of a virtual keypad displayed on the display screen of the mobile terminal; and

displaying a display character of the particular key corresponding to the second touch input according to an attribute of the particular character, if the first and second touch inputs are a multi-touch.

12. The method of claim 11, wherein, the display character of the particular key is displayed using at least one of a font, a size and a color of the particular character.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein time periods of the respective first and second touch inputs overlap for the multi-touch.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the particular character is a number, and the display character includes one of 0 to 9.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the virtual keypad includes a plurality of display characters, and each of the plurality of display characters have different attributes from each other.

16. A mobile terminal, comprising:

a display screen configured to display a screen image of a particular character and a virtual keypad and to detect touch inputs; and

a controller configured to detect a first touch input of touching the particular character and a second touch input of touching a particular key of the virtual keypad, and to control display of a display character of the particular key corresponding to the second touch input according to an attribute of the particular character, if the first and second touch inputs are a multi-touch.

17. The mobile terminal of claim 16, wherein the controller applies at least one of a font, a size and a color of the particular character to the display character.

18. The mobile terminal of claim 16, wherein time periods of the respective first and second touch inputs overlap for the multi-touch.

19. The mobile terminal of claim 16, wherein the particular character is a number, and the display character includes one of 0 to 9.

20. The mobile terminal of claim 16, wherein the virtual keypad includes a plurality of display characters, and each of the plurality of display characters have different attributes from each other.