Patent ID: 7986802

Claim:
A personal hands-free accessory for use with a portable electronic device, comprising: an input that receives an audio signal from the portable electronic device; at least one electro-acoustic speaker for converting electrical signals to audible sound; at least one microphone that receives ambient sound and converts the ambient sound to an ambient sound signal; a processing circuit, the processing circuit including circuitry that combines the audio signal from the portable electronic device with the ambient sound signal from the at least one microphone and provides the combined signals to the at least one speaker such that the at least one speaker reproduces the ambient sound in combination with audio from the audio signal; event detecting circuitry for detecting an occurrence of a predefined event; and disabling circuitry for substantially disabling the reproduction of the ambient sound signal by the at least one speaker based upon the detected occurrence of the predefined event, while still permitting the reproduction of the audio signal by the at least one speaker; wherein the portable electronic device comprises a mobile phone, and the predefined event comprises the mobile phone engaging in a phone communication with a predefined connection.