Forgetting to turn off your mobile telephone before bed or during an important meeting may soon no longer be a problem.
Software giant Microsoft appears to be developing a phone that can prevent its customers from being disturbed by calls, text messages and social media at inappropriate times.
The phone will use a range of sensors to detect its surrounding environment, automatically diverting calls and telling your friends you are unavailable in the right conditions.
For example, by detecting that a room is dark while placed face up on a table, it will recognise that the user is probably asleep or trying to get to sleep.
If its GPS detects that the phone a specific location like a cinema or the theatre, it will know be able to divert calls to voicemail and prevent messages from getting through.
If a user is driving, the phone may ask your friends to phone you on hands free rather than sending text or instant messages.
Simply turning the phone face down on a table may indicate that the user is in a meeting and so they are unavailable.
The plans, which will be seen as an attempt to take on the dominance of Apple's iPhone, are revealed in a recently published patent application made by Microsoft.
Currently phones equipped with its Windows Phone software are still struggling in competition with the iPhone and Google's Android devices.
It stated: “Currently online availability is determined via the use, or lack of use, of a computer or via a user manually setting their online availability.
“One drawback associated with determining online availability using current network based messaging applications is that a user is required to keep one’s availability state up to date.
“Sets of rules may describe different online presence states associated with a user of the mobile device.
“A rule may instruct the messaging application to automatically restrict communication to a certain mode of communication based on received sensor location data.
“For example, if it determined that the user of the mobile computing device is moving, for example, the user is driving, then the messaging applications may change the users preferred communication method.
“If the mobile computing device is upside down, then a matching online presence state is ‘Do not disturb’.
“But if the mobile computing device is right side up and the lights are turned off, then a matching online presence state is ‘Unavailable’.”
While the patent application specifically mentions Microsoft’s Live Messenger instant message application as one example where the device could be used, it states it could work with other social networking applications, voice calls and video conferencing.
It suggests that sensors could measure the phone’s location, direction and speed of travel, the time, light levels, the device’s orientation, the temperature and pressure.
This data would then be used to help determine where the user was and what they were doing – automatically updating their status on messaging and social networking applications.
The phone could also be set to change its own state according to this information so that calls could be diverted or a message could be sent to friends asking them to contact the user in another way.
The patent added: “The communication preferences may include without limitation, IM text messages, electronic mail, voice calls, video conferencing voice mail and a restriction preference.”