A new patent application showed up recently on the USPTO website from Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of Blackberry mobile devices. The application shows a slider phone with a hidden QWERTY keyboard behind and looks an awful lot like some mobile handsets we’ve seen recently from HTC.

The device is described by RIM as a Hybrid Portrait-Landscape Device With Trackball Navigation and Qwerty Hideaway Keyboard. I don’t think we’ve seen any devices from HTC that have a trackball which is somewhat of a trademark of RIM, but is that enough to make this a novel invention? We’re also wondering if this could be the new touchscreen BlackBerry that we’ve been hearing rumors about for quite some time now.

Among the many product announcements released by Sony Ericsson today the most significant has to be the release of the new XPERIA line by introducing the XPERIA X1. The new XPERIA brand marks a new era for Sony Ericsson in mobile devices, with this sweet-looking new model featuring a whole host of communication mediums, driven from a touch screen and full-QWERTY keyboard and riding on Windows Mobile 6.

SE calls the design of the X1 an “arch slider” as it slides up to expose the full keyboard with a large 3-inch VGA display on top. The impressive list of features continues with a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus and video, a microSD slot and communications via Bluetooth, GPS, Wi-Fi, and quad-band GSM/EDGE, and 900/1700/1900/2100MHz UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA.