Today Apple patented a " converged handheld thingy to do stuff with multimedia" (check out The Register's article on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/07/apple_handheld_thing_patent/)
To quote The Register
"In the submission, published today, Apple says that the invention is a way of operating a handheld device with limited buttons that includes two or more functions including PDA, mobile phone, music player, camera, video player, game player, "handtop" (whatever that is), net terminal, GPS and remote control.
There's aren't many new phones that don't include most of these features, leading to speculation that Apple has come up with a new smartphone user interface. But can it add anything really new?
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