Sony Ericsson patents "PSP" like Phone

Nowadays everything seems to be converging into a mobile phone. It already can be a perfectly good digital camera, a mobile TV station a music player or GPS receiver. One of the things missing here was a mobile gaming platform. But it’s coming too.

And which phone manufacturer is better positioned to create a perfect mobile gaming platform then Sony Ericsson? It already has one available thanks to Sony (Sony PSP). It also makes some great mobile phones via Sony Ericsson joint venture.

Their recent patent filing shows how Sony Ericsson will go about integrating these two gadgets:
The main question Sony Ericsson asked when designing PSP phone was:
What is the main problem with using your phone for mobile games?
The answer was - gaming controls.The numeric keypad is just not good enough to control the action in games. But who says all the keys on the numeric keypad have to be identical?

Sony has already designed very good game controls on PSP. So now they just made a few keys on numeric keypad into a game controls and the problem was solved.



The other problem was that most of the good games are played holding PSP console with both hands and using two thumbs to control game characters. And the phone is operated usually with a single hand and thumb.

Rotating screen came to the rescue here. When the device is in a phone mode, all you have is a simple mobile phone with numeric keypad , menu and function keys. Turn the screen around 180 degrees, your menu/functional keys are transformed into game controls and you have a perfectly good portable gaming device.

the screen turned 90 degrees to make this device into a mobile TV station too (as existing LG phone)


See patent here