Abstract: A communication device (200), such as a cellular mobile phone or a cordless phone, has a dial unit (208) for communication with a base station. An input device for dialing a phone number which forwards a coded dial signal (215) to the dial unit (208) is implemented as an optical character recognition (OCR) scanner (210) that reads phone numbers (202) from a printed or hand-written original (201). Optionally, especially for recognizing hand-writing, the scanner (210) sends graphical representations of input data to the base station that obtains the code dial signals by an external processor.

Abstract: An optical sensing unit is provided which comprises at least one sample measurement cell, at least one excitation light source acting upon the or each measurement cell to provide one or more sensor fields defining an array of measurement fields, a photoelectric detector array for detecting the intensity of light emitted from the or each measurement cell in response to excitation light, and means for directing light emitted from each measurement field to a respective portion of the photoelectric detector array. The sensing unit may be used in combination with multiplexed waveguide arrays or multiplexed planar cappillary chromatography or electrophoresis chips.