Patent ID: 7561072

Claim:
A device for receiving an input character from a user, comprising a keypad comprising a plurality of keys arranged in rows and columns forming a keypad array; a display operable to display an onscreen array; a selection interface for accessing a plurality of nested arrays to be displayed as the onscreen array when selected, each nested array comprising a plurality of elements arranged in rows and columns in a pattern corresponding to the location of the keys on the keypad, wherein each element of the onscreen array is coordinately mapped according to the pattern to a corresponding key in the keypad array and not displayed on the keypad itself; a language mode selection interface displayed on a first onscreen array for switching between different languages, said interface comprising a plurality of language mode selections displayed as elements of the onscreen array and mapped to the corresponding key in the keypad array for user selection from the keypad, and wherein each language mode selection is associated with its respective character set and characters nested thereunder; a nested character selection interface for each language mode selection which displays as elements of the onscreen array a second onscreen array of nested character sets and, upon further selection, a third onscreen array of nested characters of the alphabet of the language and mapped to the corresponding key in the keypad array for user selection from the keypad; a processor for receiving a selection of the plurality of nested arrays by first receiving a first user language selection from the language mode selection interface and for thereafter receiving one or more input characters from the nested character selection interface by populating the second onscreen array with a plurality of nested character sets as elements of the second onscreen array, wherein each element comprises a character set which comprises a plurality of characters; receiving a second user selection from the keypad to select one of the nested character sets from the second onscreen array mapped to second user selection; re-populating the onscreen array with a plurality of nested characters from the selected one of the nested character sets as elements of the third onscreen array, wherein each element comprises a single character from the selected character set; and receiving a third user selection from the keypad to select one of the nested characters from the third onscreen array mapped to the third user selection as the input character.