Samsung are taking on the thorny challenge of cellphone gaming with an ambitious, swinging-screen concept that presents a standard-looking clamshell handset which can be twisted into a game-friendly joypad layout.  The patent documents a cellphone the inner screen of which is separate from both halves of the casing, and can swivel out to clip into place by the main hinge; the device is then held horizontally, using the joypad buttons the display’s movement has revealed.

The design also turns what was a portrait display into a landscape one, more traditionally used in gaming, and allows for a second speaker to be fitted (behind the screen) to improve in-game audio. 

Samsung have obviously aimed to keep the handset looking like a traditional cellphone on which gaming is a supplementary activity; it will be interesting to see whether Sony, who are rumored to be developing a PSP-style gaming handset, will take the opposite route and produce a portable games console that also has a cellphone slotted in somehow. 

[via Unwired View]