Virtual device architecture for mobile telephones

Abstract

The virtual device architecture provides physical and logical device drivers for interfacing software programs executing on a microprocessor of the mobile telephone of a wireless communication system with any of a wide variety of hardware devices connectable within the mobile telephone. The logical device drivers convert commands received from the software applications to commands appropriate for use by selected hardware devices. The physical device drivers receive the converted commands from the logical device drivers and in response to the received commands directly control the selected hardware devices. In one example described herein, the logical device drivers provide translation of core commands necessary to control the selected hardware devices and extended commands for enhanced control of the hardware devices. The logical device drivers operate to convert the extended commands into core commands prior to forwarding the commands to the physical device drivers. By providing logical and physical drivers for use with peripheral devices, the need to provide different versions of software executing on the microprocessor to accommodate different types of peripheral devices is substantially eliminated resulting in a considerable reduction in time and cost associated with developing, maintaining and upgrading software. By providing logical device drivers capable of accommodating both core commands and extended commands, a rich set of peripheral commands can be accommodated thereby further reducing or eliminating the need to provide different versions of software executing on the processor, while nevertheless exploiting the full capabilities of a wide variety of peripheral devices, including state of the art hardware devices such as bit-mapped displays, pointer devices and the like. Method and apparatus embodiments are described.