Patent ID: 7561902

Claim:
An apparatus for inputting characters and numerals to a display of a mobile communication system for use with communication with another user or data storage, the apparatus comprising: a keypad having a plurality of buttons and consonants and vowels of each language out of Korean, Roman, Japanese and Chinese, numerals, functional keys allocated in at least four sliding directions, and generating a key signal according to the button operation of a user who wants to input a character or a numeral, and the sliding motion of the keypad in at least four directions centering around a the user within a main body of the mobile communication terminal; a character storage for storing character data of each language supported by the mobile communication terminal; a program memory for storing an internal operating program of the mobile communication terminal; a code storage for storing code data corresponding to the buttons arranged on the keypad and the sliding directions of the keypad; a button-operation recognition unit for detecting a key operating state of each of the buttons on the keypad; a keypad sliding recognition unit for detecting a key operating state according to the sliding motion of the keypad in at least four direction; a microprocessor, driven by the operating program in the program memory in response to a key operation state detection signal inputted through the button-operation recognition unit and/or the keypad sliding recognition unit, for deciding with reference to the character data in the character storage which phoneme of what language the user inputs, generating a display control signal for displaying the phoneme of the corresponding language referring to the code data in the code storage, and outputting the phoneme; a display driving unit, under a display control signal outputted from the microprocessor, for outputting a driving control signal displaying a character and a numeral the user selects by pressing a button on the keypad or sliding the keypad in a desired direction; and a display, under the driving control signal outputted form the display driving unit, for displaying on a screen the character and the numeral the user selects.