The present invention provides a method and system that uses serial, writable,
nonvolatile memory (serial memory) in a portable radio telephone. According to
an object of the present invention, the serial memory may be integral to a cell
phone or attached to a cell phone via an add-on card or the like. According to
another object, the serial memory may be embedded in a cell phone accessory or
attached to an accessory via an add-on card or the like. In both objects, once
the portable radio telephone is powered on, data stored in serial memory is transferred
into onboard random access memory (RAM), which in turn is utilized by the CPU and/or
other cell phone systems. Serial memory includes, but is not limited to, NAND-type
flash memory, as well as, flash and EEPROM memories that utilize the following
interface architectures: the mircowire bus, the I2C bus, the SPI bus
and/or the MPS bus. Among other things, serial memory may store the operating system,
applications, and radio calibration parameters.