The pictures shown here are taken from Apple's latest patent application for what could possibly be its follow-up to the iPhone. It features a slightly bigger-than-standard click-wheel and a screen, and is rumored to be the design for a lower-tech, cheaper version of the iPhone.

Let's face it, most of us will never get to own the $600 iPod/cellphone hybrid that Apple let loose this 2007. Though you can always scoot over to the nearest Apple Mac Center just to get the look and feel of the unit, the iPhone isn't available anywhere except in the United States as of now. And with and Asian release date of 2008, it looks to be a very very long wait for us here in the RP. But even if it finally does hit our shores (no doubt it will, in due time), it will hardly be any cheaper. If anything, it will be more expensive (as if it wasn't expensive enough). The iPhone is clearly this year's must-have gadget. But with a higher-end price point, not everyone can get a taste of it.

This same problem came up way back when prohibitively priced 5th generation video iPods came out with as much as 80 GB capacity. The solution? Cheaper 5th-G iPods with a lower hard drive capacity. 30 GB to be exact. For those who still couldn't afford the less expensive 30-gig models, Apple came out with even cheaper flash-drive based players (the Shuffle, Mini and Nano) with anywhere from 512 mb to 8 GB of memory. And as we all know, it is with these budget iPods that Apple began to dominate. So it shouldn't come as a surprise if Apple rolls out budget iPhones that will cater to the tech-hungry, music-loving, shirtless masses. I'm sure few people will complain about a product that's just a cellphone with integrated full-blown iPod capabilities. Plus it will be cheaper, and therefore can be afforded by a bigger market.

The downgraded iPhone has not yet been confirmed, though. But it's pretty obvious that Apple would do well to look into the said concept.

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