Method and apparatus for recognizing characters

An apparatus for recognizing characters in a portable terminal, comprising:

• an acceleration sensor for measuring a current moving speed of the portable terminal;
• a scan module for generating scanned image data by scanning a scan target as the portable terminal moves across the scan target;
• and
• a controller for deleting part of the scanned image data when the current moving speed is less than a lower limit of an optimal scan speed range, and performing character recognition on remaining scanned image data;
• and for detecting image data most similar to the scanned image data from a correction image database when the current moving speed is greater than an upper limit of the optimal scan speed range, and outputting characters corresponding to the detected image data as character recognition results,
• wherein the correction image database is an aggregate of image data generated by scanning that is performed when the portable terminal moves at a moving speed greater than or equal to the upper limit of the optimal scan speed range.