Patent ID: 7251318

Claim:
A method for displaying messages on a display of a wireless portable communication device, comprising the method steps of: initiating a message from a message originator to a message recipient; receiving at a message center coupled to a communication network both message originator information provided automatically by the communications network as the caller ID identifying the telephone number of the message originator, and a non-facsimile picture obtained from the message originator prior to transmitting the caller ID to a wireless portable communication device; causing the communications network to wirelessly transmit the caller ID and the picture from the message center to the wireless portable communication device; storing in a memory of the wireless portable communication device a contact database having a plurality of entries, each entry comprised of at least one telephone number and one name corresponding to the at least one telephone number; receiving data including the caller ID at the wireless portable communication device; comparing the received data with the contact database, to determine if the telephone number associated with the caller ID received matches a telephone number or name in any of the contact database entries; displaying contact database data on the display of the wireless portable communication device that corresponds to the received data; and displaying on the display of the wireless portable communication device a message prompting the user to enter additional data corresponding to the received data, if the received data does not match any telephone number or name in the contact database.