Patent ID: 8904164

Claim:
A handheld electronic device, the device comprising: a touch-screen; a radio for wireless communications; one or more sensors to determine an environment of the device; and a memory including a database for the storage of information, wherein the device is operable to provide context awareness based on activities performed by a user with the device, the context awareness including monitoring of a current operational mode of the device, and situational awareness based on sensing of the external environment surrounding the device, the situational awareness including monitoring the external environment using one or more sensors, the device being configured to use combined context awareness and situational awareness to: monitor a current context of the device, wherein the current context of the device includes a current operational mode and a current activity of the device, monitor a current surrounding external environment of the device using the one or more sensors, determine information that is related to the current context of the device and the current external environment of the device, receive a request by a user to perform a first operation, the request including a request for information, access information in the database that is not requested by the user and that is not necessary to perform the first operation, the non-requested information including the information that is related to both the current context and the current external environment, and in addition to providing requested information to the user, provide at least part of the non-requested information to the user in response to the request, wherein a selection of which non-requested information to provide to the user is based on a probability that the non-requested information will be useful to the user, the probability being based on relationships between the requested information and the non-requested information, and wherein the non-requested information that is provided to the user by the device excludes information not accessible to the user in the current operational mode of the device.