Nokia could be working on a new twin-sliding mobile phone concept that puts even Samsung's multi-sliding twisting phones in the shade. UnwiredView have got their hands on this pic from a patent filing from Nokia, which shows the design of a new smartphone.

One of the problems with smartphones has been that they look good when used as PDAs, but ridiculous when placed next to the ear to make a call. Samsung have recently tried to overcome this shortcoming with their new Samsung SGH-P100 smartphone, which folds out as a clamshell phone when making calls, or the conventional landscape-oriented smartphone way when used as a PDA.

In contrast, Nokia uses the candy-bar approach, but with a twisting fascia that both exposes the keypad when the screen is slid open, and reorients the numerical keypad when the phone is turned from phone mode (in portrait orientation) to smartphone mode (with landscape).

UnwiredView speculate that this could be the Nokia N99, which turned out to be an extremely bad set of Photoshop images and fan-boy wishful thinking, rather than any actual product that Nokia are working on. This is pants wishful-thinking, though, as the bad N99 pics look nothing like this patent, and the chances are the patent will never see the light of day anyway - big tech companies love churning out patents for the sake of it, and would patent their own Grandmother if she grew a novel-shaped Granny-beard, just to improve the year's patent-count.

So don't hold your breath on this thing seeing the light of day. The patent was first filed in September 2005, and nothing's come from it yet, so admire the idea, but don't be too upset if you never see it!

[Source: UnwiredView. Nokia's patent]