Wonder what could be the next technology that may appear in your future generation mobile phone? A recent patent filing done by Sony Ericsson, the famous mobile phone manufacturer has disclosed a potential trend of having a portable hands-free device with sensor in next generation mobile devices.

For instance, it could be a purely facial detection via a front-facing camera that snapshot and analyze the users’ facial expression and eventually allows the control of selecting audio’s playlist automatically to suit one’s mood. The idea looks quite similar to what being disclosed by NEC’s digital signage with eye flavor facial recognition technology that can differentiate visitors by their characteristics and only display those advertisements that fit well to the crowd and eventually make the whole advertisement effort more effective. But one major difference here is the new patent idea will be targeted for tiny mobile device in which it could be a huge challenge for actual implementation, either from the software algorithm or hardware point of view without affecting much on its original size.

While the patent filing doesn’t mean that the feature will be executed or implemented in mobile industry, but at least the idea will help us visualizing what could be the next generation technology trend in mobile market.