1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the display of icons on a mobile terminal, and more particularly, to a method and mobile terminal for displaying icons according to data communication usage states wherein, when an icon supported by a service plan with data communication limits is selected, the appearance of the selected icon is changed in accordance with the available amount of services remaining.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile terminals supporting communication have entered into widespread use due to their small size enabling ease of portability. Recently, increased sizes of touchscreens, advanced hardware and software support, and diversified digital content have dramatically accelerated the popularization of mobile terminals.
As communication functions of mobile terminals are essential to users, a variety of functions have been developed enabling users to easily and conveniently manage subscriptions to and plans with various services. In particular, with the introduction of data communication to mobile terminals, functions for Internet access or music content utilization have been popularized.
Typically, users of data communication functions supported by mobile terminals are normally charged according to the amount of data consumed. A user utilizing a specific data communication function is charged according to a service plan agreed to with a service provider. Meanwhile, a service provider providing data communication services often provides a function enabling a user to examine the amount of communication services used. However, such a function may be inconvenient for the user. For example, to identify the service usage amount, the user may have to execute a procedure to access a web server of the service provider, wait for receipt of data provided by the web server, and then find the desired information among the received data. Exasperating the user's inconvenience further, the execution of this function by the user may result in additional charges to the user, as the function itself uses data communication services. In instances when the user has limits on the amount of data communication services he or she is able to consume during a given time period, and the remaining amount of data communication services for that period is small, if the user wishes to examine the current service usage amount so as not to exceed the limit, doing so may be an unreasonable burden to the user.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds