Apple Patents: Your Next iPhone Doubles as a Walkie Talkie

Apple's putting up iPhone patents at an incredible rate: Two new applications, one for a walkie-talkie-like accessibility feature and another for a spontaneous wireless social network are very sophisticated. Is iPhone 4 going to be super-awesome?

The first patent has just been uncovered by Apple Insider, and it dates from November. It's concerned with the back-end data servers that cell-phone-network providers use to route SMS text messages to and from their user's phones. Apple's patent...