Hand-held e-mail device

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention overcomes the problems noted above and satisfies the needs in this field for a hand-held electronic device with a keyboard optimized for use with the thumbs.
In the preferred embodiment of the present invention, the hand-held electronic device is a two-way paging device that permits full-text, two-way messaging such as email messaging and that includes standard PDA or PIM features such as an address book, an electronic calendar, a task list and other text-based features.
These features require user input of text strings that can be lengthy and that cannot be reduced to predetermined or "canned" strings.
Thus, for such a device, the efficient entry of data in a device meant to fit into the palm of one's hand requires that two goals are achieved.
First, the data entry must be relatively easy from a user perspective.
This means that the user must be somewhat familiar with analogous forms of data entry and not have to be trained to use the data entry for the hand-held device.
Second, the form factor does not permit a large number of keys or keys that are very large.
Thus efficient use of the keyboard space is required and functions that might be able to be performed by a standard keyboard are off-loaded to an auxiliary input device or are performed, through a minimal number of keystrokes that encourage the use of thumb-based data entry.
To accomplish these goals the invention first optimizes the placement of the keys on the device keyboard.
In order to work within the limited space available for the keyboard, it was determined that it was preferable to use keys that were oval or oblong and that were placed at angles designed to facilitate use by thumb typing.
An angle for the keys on the right side of the keyboard and a complementary angle for the keys on the left side of the keyboard are chosen based upon observation of the angle at which a user will orient his or her thumbs while thumb-typing.
The invention also minimizes the number of keys available for data input