Accessories for a telephone include at least one earphone and at least one microphone array having multiple microphones used to generate outgoing audio signals for (i) processing by a signal processor and (ii) transmission by the telephone. In one embodiment, two earphones are connected by two corresponding wires, and two microphone arrays, respectively connected to the two wires, are mechanically and electronically configurable in a plurality of use modes to generate outgoing audio signals for processing by the signal processor. The use modes include one or more and possibly all of a single-sided mode, a two-sided mode, an enhanced directivity mode, a stereo recording mode, a multichannel recording mode, a conference mode, and a two-dimensional-array mode, where one of the use modes is automatically detected by the signal processor based on the audio signals generated by the two microphone arrays.