Graphics and variable presence architectures in wireless communication networks, mobile handsets and methods therefor

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTIONS The inventions relate generally to enhanced or to enhancing presence services, including presence services for wireless subscribers, by providing presence information, including variable textual and non-textual information, for example graphical images, to presence service subscribers, which may display presence information associated with the entities for which presence information was requested, as discussed further below.
In some embodiments, the presence information provided to, or received by, subscribers depends upon the hardware and software capabilities of the subscriber unit, for example whether or not the subscriber unit is capable of generating and/or displaying graphical information.
Presence information, for example graphical presence images, may be generated, or rendered, locally on the subscriber unit.
Alternatively, this information may be received pre-rendered by the subscriber, for example from a presence server or from some other source.
Some embodiments of the inventions thus enable subscribers with limited image rendering abilities, for example without the ability to generate graphical images, to display graphical presence information, as discussed more fully below.
In other embodiments of the inventions, the presence information provided to subscribers depends upon personal identity of the individual associated with a particular subscriber unit receiving presence information, for example one's spouse may be designated to receive different presence information from a particular entity than one's professional colleagues, who in turn may be designate to receive different presence information than one's social friends, as discussed more fully below.
In the system 100 of FIG.
1, a wireless communication device 110, for example, a two-way pager, or a cellular handset or some other two-way radio communications enabled mobile device, communicates over a wireless network 120, for example, a 2.
5 G GPRS or 3 G wideband CDMA communications network or some other wireless or paging network