Apple's patent background generally establishes the fact that most of today's cell phones include inflexible physical pushbuttons coupled with time consuming requirements to memorize multiple key sequences and menu hierarchies to accomplish simple tasks. Apple then specifically establishes the fact that interfaces for call waiting and conference calling suffer the same shortcomings. Apple states that "users are often at a loss as to the sequence of buttons to push in order to switch between calls or to make a conference call. Furthermore, the interface often does not convey intuitively the parties involved in the calls. Accordingly, there is a need for more efficient interfaces for call waiting and conference calling."

The emphasis of this particular Apple patent is clearly to present us with their proposed UI for call waiting and conference calls and the patent figures below support that fact. However, what becomes abundantly clear to those of us looking in is that Apple may be providing us with a glimpse of an alternative iPhone embodiment utilizing their traditional click wheel. Considering that the patent was originally filed only months prior to Apple's iPhone debut - which introduced us all to a full touch screen interface - the oddity of Apple's emphasis in this patent to establish the click wheel as the exemplary embodiment may point to the fact that lower tech iPhone variants are in the works. Apple's FIG 2 noted above is testament to this fact.

Exemplary Graphical User Interfaces