A patent application that was published yesterday reveals a new mobile phone interface by Microsoft that looks uncannily like the iPhone. The patent, filed in July 2007, is called “Extensible filtered lists for mobile device user interface” and talks about how mobile phones are so complicated to use because they are chock-full of features. This problem, the patent application says, is “exacerbated by the generally limited user interfaces”.

The pictures from the patent, however, shows a very striking resemblance to the iPhone’s interface, particularly the way it handles images, music, and visual voicemail. Navigation-wise, there is a shortcut display with shows a horizontal list. The shortcut display can arrange the elements of the horizontal list as a vertical list so additional items can be displayed. The shortcut list lets the user navigate through the parent list. When an item or element in the shortcut list is selected, it triggers a return to the parent horizontal list. On the return, the parent list gets updated so the item selected in the shortcut list has focus in the parent list. (see picture after the jump)

There has been much speculation about a Zune Phone but these rumors seem to be unfounded. This patent is most likely going to be a newer version of a Windows Mobile OS.

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