The awkward lapdog that is the Internet rumour constantly humps the many legs of gaming and often takes grip well enough to remain latched on until it comes good. Comes good with its rumours you understand, not... Well it was a rubbish analogy anyway. What we mean to say is that a lot of what is rumoured is based in fact - guess work and the obvious at worst.

This being the case, it's interesting to note that a rumour that is starting to flare, not for the first time, sees Sony Computer Entertainment working on an imminent redesign of the PSP, a machine that debuted back in December of 2004.

It's here where this rumour gets interesting. The big gossip points towards Sony deploying a clamshell PSP with a seamless folding screen. Yeah, didn't expect that one did you? A folding screen surrounded by a shrunk-down outer case, updated, more energy-efficient processing innards and a smaller, higher-capacity battery.

Much of the chinwag stems from this, a patent filed by Sony somewhat sneakily during E3 on May 11th this year. The abstract for Patent 20060099808 reads:



All a bit techie but you get the idea. However, in the notes this is to be found:



Smoke and fire dear friends, smoke and fire...

We were unable to contact Sony for comment at time of press, though we'll keep on it this week and try and get what will almost certainly be a glib predictable quote explaining that Sony doesn't divulge its innermost secrets to nosey gaming websites.

And sorry again for the dog bit at the beginning. Tell us what's in your brain, be it an amusing story about a horny dog or top secret information on emerging hardware (it's happened before, don't you know) in the forum after the jump.