METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RECORDING AND PLAYING BACK A CONVERSATION USING A DIGITAL WIRELESS PHONE

A wireless telephone with record and playback capability is disclosed. The telephone has an operation module, which transmits near-end signals and receives far-end signals, and a record module which writes transmission packets formed from the near-end signals in a first location of a memory and reception packets formed from the far-end signals in a second location of the memory. A playback module reads the transmission packets and the reception packets from the memory, and decodes the transmission packets into transmission speech samples and the reception packets into reception speech samples using transmission and reception decoders, respectively. Further, the playback module has a mixer to mix the transmission speech samples with the reception speech samples to form mixed speech signals for playback on a speaker. The playback module also includes a voice activity detector which outputs a skip signal to the transmission and reception decoders in response to detection of either voice in the transmission speech samples or silence in the reception speech samples. In response to the skip signal, the transmission and reception decoders discard a current transmission packet and a current receive packet and read a next transmission packet and a next reception packet from the memory.