Nokia patent application 20090059491

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...AND+TTL/device


is a patent application on slding mechanisms and one of the images presents a pretty novel handset which I think you guys should all see.

Figure 7a through 7d has two swivel arms attached to the full qwerty keyboard underneath that let the keyboard rotate into both landscape and portrait positions.



Figure 3a is a handset with both a top and bottom slide out part at the same time figure 3b (seems useless to me)



Figure 6A shows a full qwerty keyboard that stays full in both landscape and portrait.
You gotta see that one because I don't think anyone has thought of that mechanism before.



Figure 8a through 8d has a slide out landscape keyboard with two swivel plates on either side of it. They are leaving it open as to what the plates do mouse etc..



Figure 9f shows a slide out landscape letter keyboard to the left and the number pad swivels from portrait over to become the right side of the landscape keyboard so that you have letters on the left numbers on the right.



You know what?.... Nokia should just come on to maemo.org and ask us what form factor we want. Take a vote on several sites. Post the images of the different form factors and ask us to vote on them. They should do that on several sites and then repeat the process for phones.
That would give them their next 5 phone models and tablet models. They don't have to give out all the details and of course things get changed during production and testing.