Patent ID: 7050834

Claim:
A hands-free telephone system for a vehicle comprising: a Bluetooth™ enabled cell phone located in the vehicle, the cell phone storing a phonebook having entries, each entry including a name text and an associated telephone number; and a vehicle appliance integrated into the vehicle, the vehicle appliance having a Bluetooth™ enabled communications module, memory, a text-to-speech (TTS) module, and a voice synthesizer; the communications module being operable for wirelessly communicating with the cell phone to receive a selected phonebook entry from the cell phone; the TTS module being operable for converting the name text of the selected phonebook entry into a voice tag for play by the voice synthesizer over a vehicle speaker for the operator to hear; the memory being operable for storing the converted voice tag and the associated telephone number of the selected phonebook entry in a phonebook for access by the voice synthesizer; wherein the vehicle appliance further includes a controller operable for accessing the memory to determine if the converted voice tag of the name text of the selected phonebook entry corresponds to a voice tag of a name text already stored in the memory, wherein if the converted voice tag of the name text of the selected phonebook entry corresponds to a voice tag of a name text already stored in the memory, the voice synthesizer outputs an indication over the vehicle speaker for the driver to hear indicating that the converted voice tag of the name text of the selected phonebook entry corresponds to a voice tag of a name text already stored in the memory; wherein the vehicle appliance further includes a voice recognition module operable for receiving a verbal pronunciation of the converted voice tag of the selected phonebook entry by the operator, the voice recognition module being operable for converting the verbal pronunciation into a voice tag for play by the voice synthesizer over the vehicle speaker for the operator to hear; wherein the memory is operable for storing the voice tag converted by the voice recognition module in place of the converted voice tag generated by the TTS module for access by the voice synthesizer.