Temporary user suspension of automatic shutdown

#1.FIELD OF THE INVENTION

#The present invention generally relates to hand-held devices and, more particularly, to the temporary user suspension of the automatic shutdown feature (auto-off) provided for most hand-held devices.

#2.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

#FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an auto-off settings screen of a hand-held device, according to the prior art;

#FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating a hand-held device 200 to which the present invention may be applied, according to an illustrative embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating an automatic shutdown device 300 for a hand-held device, according to an illustrative embodiment of the present invention; and

#The present invention is directed to the temporary user suspension of the automatic shutdown (auto-off) feature provided for most hand-held devices. The temporary user suspension temporarily disables the auto-off feature such that the user has to manually shutdown the hand-held device, thereby controlling the time at which the hand-held device is powered down. However, upon a subsequent power-up of the hand-held device, the auto-off feature is automatically re-enabled. Thus, the hand-held device user can continue whatever activity they were engaged in without having to reset the time-delay for the auto-off feature.

#It is to be understood that the present invention may be implemented in various forms of hardware, software, firmware, special purpose processors, or a combination thereof. Preferably, the present invention is implemented as a combination of hardware and software. Moreover, the software is preferably implemented as an application program tangibly embodied on a program storage device. The application program may be uploaded to, and executed by, a machine comprising any suitable architecture. Preferably, the machine is implemented on a computer platform having hardware such as one or more central processing units (CPU), a random access memory (RAM), and input/output (I/O) interface(s). The computer platform also includes an operating system and microinstruction code. The various processes and functions described herein may either be part of the microinstruction code or part of the application program (or a combination thereof) that is executed via the operating system. In addition, various other peripheral devices may be connected to the computer platform such as an additional data storage device and a printing device.

#It is to be further understood that, because some of the constituent system components and method steps depicted in the accompanying Figures are preferably implemented in software, the actual connections between the system components (or the process steps) may differ depending upon the manner in which the present invention is programmed. Given the teachings herein, one of ordinary skill in the related art will be able to contemplate these and similar implementations or configurations of the present invention.