There’s never a dull moment in the world of Apple patents. We’ve seen sneak peeks of many new pieces Apple kit in the past, and we’ve seen some things that have never made it into real world. Looking at the two latest patent applications from the boys in Cupertino, we’re really not sure which category they fit into.

A new report claims Apple’s next iPhone will be called the iPhone 4S, and it will feature ‘minor cosmetic changes’. Business Insider reports that Jefferies analyst Peter Misek has put out a note on the next iPhone, claiming Apple will go for the ‘iPhone 4S’ moniker rather than go straight to iPhone 5.

We’re going to put this out there from minute one – we’ve no idea whether this is legit or not, but it sure looks like it.

Following the previous rumors about the iPhone 4S/5, it looked like the next-gen iPhone will just be a hardware upgrade over the current iPhone 4 instead of a cosmetic one. But according to ThisIsMyNext, things might be a little different, in fact way too different from what we’ve been hearing about the next gen iPhone all this time!

Just yesterday, through a patent, we found about Apple’s secondary display that may be introduced in their upcoming iOS devices. Well, there’s a new patent out already which highlights some of the details of the primary display of next-gen iPhone. The new improved display will be hybrid of e-ink and standard LCD.

PatentlyApple has been watching Apple closely for the patents that folks at Cupertino are filing at USPTO. The recent inclusion assigned to Apple is one of its kind piece of technology. The new revived bezel offers a secondary display built around printed segmented electroluminescence technology for various controls for work and play.

Boy Genius Report is reporting about a block of low level operating system code found in iOS 4 which reveals codenames for CDMA iPhone 4 and the next-gen iPad. Their sources at Apple has confirmed that the queries you see in the screenshot below refers to CDMA iPhone (on Verizon) and iPad 2 and that they are about to hit the field testing stage. Also these new devices are said to auto-activate, bypassing iTunes for activation. Apple probably has done it so that carriers may not be able to find anything in the activation logs.

Remember T-1000 Skynet robot which was made from Liquid Metal in Terminator 2? Well it looks like Steve Jobs and Co are in full mood to build their next-gen hardware using Liquidmetal Technologies, a California based company from which they recently acquired exclusive rights to build products made of Liquid Metal alloy.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc. in his keynote address at WWDC 10 (World Wide Developers Conference) has announced the much awaited iPhone 4. After a long presentation about the number of apps downloaded from iTunes, number of iPads sold, some new enhancements to iPad, and the new development tools and corporate features that the phone’s updated operating system, “iPhone 4.0,” will support, Jobs finally got to the details about the next-generation phone that has been leaked with tons of rumors for months.

The million dollar question, how long before the new iPhone 4 is going to be jailbroken and unlocked? Well we already know that the iPhone Dev Team has already announced that they are going to release an unlock which will work on the 05.12.01 baseband on all iPhones, provided they haven’t upgraded to the latest 05.13 baseband. But since the new iPhone 4 will have the latest baseband, it will be a while before it gets fully jailbroken and unlocked. Another infamous iPhone hacker by the name of Geohot is also said to have a new bootrom exploit, which he has preserved for this new iPhone.

WWDC 10 is only about 12 hours away now where Apple will unveil the next iPhone and what we have now is even more pictures leaked from Korea, showing the back panel, and other parts of the white model (video here) of the next-gen iPhone. The back panel case is similar to all the previous leaks that we have seen so far. Maybe someone in China, Vietnam or Korean region have got loads of these parts and they are selling it off to make loads of money right before the official announcement by Jobs.

WWDC 10 is going to be a huge event for both developers and consumers. Apple has got some cool new things to announce such as the new iPhone 4 / HD. But what are the other things which we should expect from Steve Jobs’ WWDC 10 keynote? Let’s take a look at them.