Rumorama: iPhone Patent Application Hints At Applications To Come

The USPTO has made available online a rather huge patent application by Apple that seems to cover everything in the upcoming 3G iPhone and iPhone Software v2.0. I've barely been able to scratch the surface of the patent app, as it stretches to almost 400 pages, but of particular note for Monday's v2.0 release is what applications are hinted at:

[0092]The device supports a variety of applications, such as one or more of the following: a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a photo management application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application.

Video Conferencing has been a long rumoured feature of the 3G iPhone, with folks like Kevin Rose claiming the new iPhone will have up to two cameras for picture and video recording (front and back.)

IM is one of those "duh" applications, specially following the demo of AOL's own AIM app at the iPhone Software Rodmap presentation earlier this year.

A blogging application has me feeling all tingly inside. It'd be awesome to be able to write posts on the road (while Movable Type, the system that powers Homotron.net, does allow for editing and writing of text in posts on my iPhone, there is currently no way to upload images, so it's not very useful for our purposes here.)

Hopefully all of these applications see the light of day on Monday, but I'm not holding my breath; Apple is a master at teasing us with their patent applications.

iPhone Patent Application Surfaces: IM, Blogging App, Video Conferencing, More [MacRumors]