Patent ID: 7552142

Claim:
A method for affecting diagonal movement of a cursor on a display screen of a handheld communication device, said method comprising: sensing movement at an auxiliary user input of the handheld communication device indicative of the user's desire to affect diagonal movement of the cursor on the display screen of the handheld communication device; producing x-direction signals and y-direction signals based on said sensed movement at the auxiliary user input; holding the cursor steady on the display screen while processing said x-direction signals and y-direction signals until a predetermined criterion is met for discriminating whether the user has indicated x-direction cursor movement, y-direction cursor movement or diagonal cursor movement; and affecting diagonal cursor movement on the display screen of the handheld communication device when diagonal cursor movement is discriminated to have been user indicated, said handheld communication device comprises a lighted display located above a keyboard suitable for accommodating textual input to the handheld communication device when said handheld communication device is in an operable configuration, said auxiliary user input being located essentially between the display and keyboard in the operable configuration and said keyboard comprising a plurality of keys with which alphabetic letters are associated and wherein at least a portion of the individual keys have multiple letters associated therewith.