The FCC has recently published a patent for Apple that describes a secondary lighting system that can be used to give status updates on the iPhone while it is locked. Might this be foreshadowing a feature that the next iPhone will have?

“Secondary backlight indicator for portable media devices” was filed on May 18th 2007. The idea is a double-layered backlight for the iPhone or iPod; the rearmost layer shows items such as “paused”, “new mail” and other notifications by shining though cutouts in the primary backlight. The secondary backlight is designed to be a more energy efficient way to show notifications without the use of the primary backlight.

The status icons can change color or even flash depending on the backlight and user’s preference. This type of notification can replace the more common LED status lights. As usual there is no word on when this will be implemented in to an Apple device.

[Via SlashGear]