MILPITAS, Calif.-Smart-phone company PalmOne Inc. appears to be gearing up to release an innovative smart phone that features a flip-open display. The company recently received a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for a “compact personal digital assistant and cellular telephone with foldable dual-sided display.”
PalmOne was not immediately available to comment on the device.
According to documents filed with the patent and trademark office, PalmOne is researching a device that when closed looks like a standard candy bar-style mobile phone. But the phone can be opened like a book to reveal a foldout PDA-sized screen. Thus, the device can be used like a standard mobile phone but also has the benefits of a PDA-sized screen and PDA functions.
“The users of palmtop computer systems and cell phones desire the benefits of each of the respective devices, and are unlikely to sacrifice these benefits if forced to compromise the form factor of the device,” PalmOne wrote in the patent documents.
Patents for devices are typically filed years before they become commercially available. However, PalmOne’s new patent could give the company an edge up on the competition if the company manages to score royalty revenues from similar devices.
In other smart-phone news, PalmOne’s former business unit PalmSource Inc. announced a teaming with Texas Instruments Inc. to develop reference designs running on TI’s OMAP platform. The designs will run on the company’s Palm OS Cobalt platform and will be available for GPRS and EDGE networks.
