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: In a communication device (100) with an earpiece (110) and a microphone (120), there is a sensor (130) relating a first connection line (105) from the earpiece (110) to the microphone (120) on a system (200, 300) which is independent of the device and of the person using it, such as the earth's gravitational field, and which selects the operating mode QUIET (1) or LOUD (2) of the communication device in accordance with this. The sensor (130) switches the communication device (100) to QUIET when the angle (230) between the connecting line (105) and the plumbline (205) of the gravitational field basically corresponds to the angle (330) between a second connecting line between the ear (310) and the mouth (320) of a person (300) who is authorized to make the call, so as to bar other persons (400) who are in the vicinity (X2) from hearing the output from the communication device loudspeaker (110).