Context-aware and location-aware cellular phones and methods

A method of operating a cellular phone comprising:

• wirelessly receiving, with the cellular phone, information that pertains to either a physical or logical context of the cellular phone, the cellular phone being configured to receive said information from different types of context providers that provide different forms of information;
• responsive to said receiving and using only the cellular phone and its associated on-board componentry, determining a current context based upon the information and a hierarchy data structure of attributes;
• and
• modifying at least one behavior associated with the cellular phone responsive to the current context, wherein at least one of said one behavior is defined by a third party.

A cellular phone comprising:

• multiple different types of location providers which collectively are configured to receive different forms of location information that can be used by the cellular phone to ascertain its location;
• and
• one or more processors configured to:
• receive information associated with a current location of the cellular phone;
• and
• modify at least one behavior of the cellular phone responsive to the information and a hierarchy tree structure associating physical or logical locations to a plurality of atributes, wherein at least one of said one behavior is defined by a third party.

A method of operating a cellular phone comprising:

• providing a cellular phone;
• and
• determining, with the cellular phone, a present cellular phone location wherein said determining comprises:
• receiving location information;
• accessing one or more hierarchical tree structures having nodes, each node being capable of corresponding to either a physical or logical location;
• and
• using the location information to traverse at least portions of the one or more tree structures to ascertain the present location.

A cellular phone comprising:

• one or more computer-readable media;
• one or more hierarchical traversable tree structures resident on the computer-readable media, the tree structures comprising individual nodes, each of which is capable of being associated with either a physical or logical phone context;
• and
• one or more processors configured to:
• receive information that pertains to a current context of the cellular phone;
• automatically determine the current context based on the information by traversing at least one node on one of the trees;
• and
• modify at least one behavior of the cellular phone responsive to the current context.

A cellular phone comprising:

• a context service module that is configured to receive different forms of information from multiple different types of context providers;
• and
• one or more processors associated with the context service module and configured to:
• receive information that pertains to a current context of the cellular phone;
• determine the current context based on the information and a hierarchy data tree of attributes, wherein levels of the hierarchy tree of attributes are arranged in one or more classes selected from a group consisting of a political abstraction, an administrative abstraction, and organization abstraction, a geographical abstraction, an infrastructure abstraction, a public place abstraction and a private entity abstraction;
• and
• modify at least one behavior of the cellular phone responsive to the current context, wherein at least one of said one behavior is defined by a third party.

A cellular phone comprising:

• location provider means for receiving different forms of location information;
• means for ascertaining a current location from the different forms of location information;
• means for determining a context from the current location and a hierarchy tree structure, wherein the hierarchy tree structure comprises:
• a plurality of nodes, wherein each node is linked to one or more other nodes;
• a plurality of attributes corresponding to either a physical or logical context wherein each attribute is associated with at least one node;
• and
• means for modifying at least one behavior associated with the cellular phone responsive to the context.