Handheld device for dialing of phone numbers extracted from a voicemail

A method for processing a telephone number embedded in a voicemail received by a user of the handheld device, the handheld device comprising a processor and a memory, the method comprising:

• playing back the voicemail;
• in response to receiving a first marker set by the user to indicate a start of a telephone number, initiating storage of an audio sample corresponding to the telephone number in the memory;
• terminating storage of the audio sample corresponding to the telephone number in the memory either automatically or in response to receiving a second marker set by the user to indicate an end of the telephone number;
• and
• using the processor, processing the stored audio sample to extract digits corresponding to the telephone number;
• determining a quality score corresponding to the extracted digits;
• if the quality score corresponding to the extracted digits is within a predetermined range, then comparing the extracted digits to at least one of a set of locally stored telephone numbers and a set of network-stored telephone numbers to generate higher-confidence digits and communicating the higher-confidence digits to an application executing on the processor.

A handheld device comprising:

• a memory for storing:
• instructions for playing back a voicemail received by the user of the handheld device, and instructions for in response to receiving a first marker set by the user to indicate a start of a telephone number, initiating real-time processing of an audio sample corresponding to the telephone number;
• and
• a processor for processing the audio sample to extract digits corresponding to the telephone number and communicating the extracted digits to an application executing on the processor;
• instructions for determining a quality score corresponding to the extracted digits, and
• instructions for comparing, if the quality score corresponding to the extracted digits is within a predetermined range, the extracted digits to at least one of a set of locally stored telephone numbers and a set of network-stored telephone numbers to generate higher-confidence digits.