A land-based or mobile phone and methods are provided for receiving inbound communications as either voice or text, and then based on the user's configuration settings, the inbound communication is provided to the user as it was received or is automatically converted into a format that is desired by the user. The phone also takes voice or text that is input by the user of the phone and converts the user's input to either voice or text based on the configuration settings stored in the user's contact list or otherwise. The outbound communication is configured according to how the intended recipient wants to receive a communication based on the configuration settings stored in the user's contact list or otherwise. The phone includes a controller that determines how the phone will handle and process inbound and outbound communications. The controller includes a speech recognition engine.