First, it was Nokia who is rumored to be coming up with the N95 - a dual slide cellular phone, now the U.S. Patent Office published Sony's application for a "Flipper Phone Configuration", which they could only hope be the next 'it' handheld device. This of course deviates from the usual design of a flip or clamshell phone like the Z520 or the W300i. So just what is the essence of this flipper phone configuration?

Apparently this patented configuration would have a housing that has two portions. According to the published patent, the "first portion of the housing has an opening, an inner surface and an opposed outer surface. A module has an inner major surface and an outer major surface.

The complicated stuff do not end there, apparently the phone is geared to be the ultimate sidekick for a busy-bee, "the module is movably disposed in the opening of the first portion of the housing for movement relative to the first portion of the housing between a first position, where the inner major surface of the module is substantially coincident with the inner surface of the first portion of the housing, and a second position, where the inner major surface of the module is substantially coincident with the outer surface of the first portion of the housing."

Ok, very complicated this one is (I got lost at the third sentence), but it's a work in progress, and maybe a prototype isn't far from the horizons. With that, we could only hope that the Sony guys would shed some light on this new patent. For now, we here will always keep you posted.