There are five days left until the Apple WWDC kicks off June 9 – June 13 and the 3g iPhone rumors are flooding the Internet.  While GPS support is not much of a rumor at this point, the front facing camera still falls into that category.  The origin of the rumor began with At&t announcing that they had completed 90% of their HSPA network which brings HSUPA (uploads) capable of transmitting at 800kbps.  With this type of upload speed, the capacity to transmit 3g video chats on At&t’s network is possible, but whether Steve Jobs decided to develop the next generation iPhone towards this goal is unclear.  Obviously the idea that iChat on the iPhone could mimic that of a MacBook or iMac would be nice, but with 10 million iPhone users all video chatting over iChat could At&t’s network handle the bandwidth load?  Probably not, but this is where the rumors meet the facts thanks to the latest iPhone patent by Cupertino’s camp.

The patent (seen below) describes several processes which are only going to stir up additional 3g iPhone rumors, but the most prominent is a front facing camera.  Within the Video Conference Module all the requirements for a front facing camera are met and now we have some concrete evidence.  Additional details of an “optical sensor” which is located at the top of the device are also within the patent filing.  With a Video Conference Module and an “optical sensor”, the front facing camera on the 3g iPhone might turn out to be a little more fact than fiction.  Whether or not we see the front facing camera in the second generation iPhone or not until version 3 remains to be seen, but at least we know it exists.