Nokia has filed for a US patent for a mobile phone with a rotating numeric keyboard. No, we don't mean an old-style dial lookalike, but a numeric pad that can turn round to retain the correct orientation when the handset it flipped into landscape mode.

The application details what looks like a standard candybar handset. The clever bit comes when you rotate it through 90°: the screen slides up to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. We've seen this sort of thing before, but the novel component is the really clever bit: the numeric pad also rotates so that it's now in the same orientation as the QWERTY layout. Thus:

Flip it all back and you have a standard handset again:

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Nokia original filed its patent applicaton back in September 2005, but the filing was updated yesterday, which is what brought it to our attention.

Thanks to reader Callum for the tip