Patent ID: 8525794

Claim:
A mobile computing device comprising: a housing; one or more processors contained within the housing, wherein the one or more processors operates the mobile computing device in either a first mode or a second mode; a keypad coupled to the one or more processors and having a first set of keys and a second set of keys, the first set and the second set including at least some of the same keys, wherein the second set comprises a plurality of key pairs, each key pair including a first key and a second key, each key pair corresponding to a numeric character entry; wherein when the one or more processors operates the mobile computing device in the first mode, the one or more processors register actuation of each individual key of the first set as a non-numeric character entry corresponding to the individual key, the corresponding non-numeric character entry for each individual key being different from the corresponding non-numeric character entry for each of the other keys; wherein when the one or more processors operates the mobile computing device in the second mode, the one or more processors registers, for each key pair, (i) individual actuation of the first key of that key pair, (ii) individual actuation of the second key of that key pair, and (iii) concurrent actuation of the first and second key of that key pair, as the corresponding numeric character entry of that key pair, the corresponding numeric character entry being different for each of the other key pairs; and wherein the one or more processors ignore actuation of any keys that are not in the second set when the one or more processors operate in the second mode.