Patent ID: 8412161

Claim:
A method carried out on a host cell phone comprising: A) receiving a text message on said cell phone or receiving an incoming phone call on said cell phone; B) detecting a push of a Busy key (Short Message Service) or Busy key (Call) on said host cell phone and sending that event to an operating system of said cell phone with a request to send to a Busy application program on said cell phone predetermined data, said predetermined data, in the case of push of said Busy key (Short Message Service), being timestamps indicating when said Busy key (Short Message Service) or Busy key (Call) was pushed and a time of receipt of a latest text message received by said host cell phone, said latest text message being a text message which was received by said host cell phone within a predetermined interval before said Busy key (Short Message Service) was pushed, and said predetermined data, in the case of a push of said Busy key (Call), being information on whether an incoming call is currently ringing said cell phone; C) making a function call to said Busy application program to launch said Busy application program after receiving information that either said Busy key (Short Message Service) or Busy key (Call) was pushed and sending said predetermined data to said Busy application program; D) determining if said Busy key (Short Message Service) was pushed within a predetermined time of the time of receipt of said latest text message, and, if so, automatically selecting said latest text message as the text message to which an automated response is to be sent and automatically sending a pre-typed text message to the phone number from which said latest text message originated without any further interaction with said user of said cell phone, said pre-typed text message being a predefined text message which has been stored in said host cell phone by the manufacturer of said cell phone or the software which runs said host cell phone or a message said user has typed and stored in memory of said host cell phone previously; E) if said Busy key (Short Message Service) was not pushed within a predetermined interval after receipt of said latest text message, determining if said Busy key (Call) was pushed while an incoming call was ringing said cell phone, and, if so, automatically answering said incoming call and playing a pre-recorded audio message to said caller; and F) if steps E and F determine that neither the Busy key (Short Message Service) nor said Busy key (Call) was pushed within a predetermined interval after receipt of said latest Short Message Service text message or while said incoming phone call is ringing said cell phone, then shutting down said Busy application program.