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All the major players in the tech industry are starting to get really serious about touch screens, if they haven’t been already in the past year. One such company is Sony Ericsson, one of the leading mobile phone manufacturers in the world. A newly discovered patent application it’s filed back in 2006 reveals that it has plans of making a similar device to the Apple iPhone, blending the features of a cellphone, music player, mobile computer, and even that of a Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) into one awesome handheld multimedia device.

With this recent discovery, rumors about an upcoming PSP syle phone become more imminent, and perhaps it will only be a matter of time until Sony Ericsson makes an official announcement about the said matter. But reading through the August 2006 patent application made by Sony Ericsson, one will find that this particular device is actually planned to be more than an update to today’s vanilla, button-filled Sony PSP.

With a full touchscreen facade, there is no room for any hardware buttons so the compromise would have to come from the innards of the machine and the software that it packs. Consider the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch with the addition of haptics feedback on top plus a touch-based Sony PSP and this is what you’ll get. The patent itself actually bears a lot of resemblance to the one filed by Apple for its own touch-based user interface (currently being used on iPhone and iPod Touch). But according to a report from Unwired View, Sony Ericsson did not violate any copyrights or copy from any of Apple’s concepts, taking into account the fact that Sony Ericsson’s patent was filed on August 30, 2006 - Several months before the iPhone was introduced, and a week before the main iPhone patent application became public.

The first samples of devices borrowing features from this concept are the soon to be released Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and the still unconfirmed Sony Ericsson P5i.

Up to now, details about the final product specs and appearance are still sketchy, but according to the information in this patent application, these are the features to watch out for:

• Full touchscreen display
• Accelerometer
• Other orientation sensors (possibly an ambient light sensor and proximity sensors)
• Haptics feedback
• Internet connectivity
• Software that allows the user interface to change according to the feature being used (phone, camera, music player, and of course, PSP)

As of now, most of the things listed here are just possibilities, and in most cases should not be trusted because not all patents come to realize existence. But then again, we’re talking about Sony Ericsson here, who’s top dog when it comes to making the best cellphones that money can buy (OK, maybe not top dog, but one of the top dogs). Until the day the final product is released though, all we can do is wait. And OK, don’t worry. All you fan boys can still dream.

Via [Unwired View]