The future of Sony Is HERE With the PSPhone

The fellas at the Giz have stumbled upon an interesting patent being developed by Sony Ericsson. Labeled as a “MOBILE INFORMATION TERMINAL APPARATUS” in order to, where guessing here, deter patent crawlers looking for a PSP/Gaming Phone application from Sony (HA! They got you!), the device includes a rotating screen for video playback and camera operation. Yes, there will be a camera built. Let’s just hope they can be more creative than Talkman for a killer app for it.

What’s missing? Well if they want to be an iPhone killer, a touch screen is missing. As lame as it sounds, “touch” is the new pink. iPhone wasn’t the first, but I can guarantee that you’ll see more and more consumer electronics, everything from phones to mp3 players to gaming systems, have touch screens. The DS is already on the bandwagon, will we see a touch-PSP in the future too?

They are also crowding the surface with too many buttons and this may be a fatal flaw for PSP purists. The shoulder buttons, if you could call them that are kinda lame and seem like an after thought. But this might on purpose since the shoulder buttons are very identifiable to the PSP and by showing the shoulder buttons in the patent app it would be a dead give away that this was indeed a PSPhone. Remember, it’s a “MOBILE INFORMATION TERMINAL APPARATUS”, ok?

I hope this isn’t a phantom application honestly. I would love to see the PSP, or PSP compatible mobile information terminal apparatuses, get into more peoples pockets no matter what form factor it is in. If the PSP installed userbase were to increase by double-digit percentages or more, it will catch they eyes and budgets of more game producers–which would hopefully mean a better selection of games for the PSP public!

So, Sony, I say let’s do it. Sign me up for your beta list, I want to be the first to test out the PSPhone!