You know that cool little feature that allows the iPhone to tell if you are holding it in straight up or on it’s side? Well, that is because of a little motion sensing device called an accelerometer.

Word on the street is that Research in Motion has a new patent filling describing such a device that can determine if you are holding your BlackBerry in landscape or portrait orientation? The “word” is in Italian and the “street” is in Italy so we we’ve translated a bit of the article for you.

The patent in question is a system that will allow Blackberry understand the orientation (horizontal or vertical), adapting human interface accordingly. The system operates in a manner very similar to the orientation sensor iPhone and iPod Touch, but the simple variation of the vision of content, in the case of Rim could also implement a change in the function.

As BlackBerry Cool pointed out, the FCC database doesn’t list this filing yet, so, we will leave this in the rumor mill category. With all the talk of slide-out keyboards and accelerometers, it sounds like some really interesting BlackBerry designs will be coming out…

[Source]