Want to a peek into the crystal ball and see what the future holds for you iPhone owners out there? Well, read on and be amazed at these potential iPhone 4.0 features that may soon be available in a firmware update down the road.

Discovered in a bunch of pending patent applications, this first one is called “Event-based modes for electronic devices.” What this basically does is allow your iPhone to automatically adjust its setting based on your location and “life events”. So, what exactly are these “life events”?

Based on the patent application, “life events” can be any one of the following:

any location-based event (e.g., the device entering or exiting a specific geographical location, such as a country, or a specific type of location, such as a movie theater, etc.), any environment-based event (e.g., the device being subjected to a specific physical orientation, movement, temperature, sound, light, etc.), any calendar-based event (e.g., the device reaching a specific time of day, day of week, date, etc.), any usage-based event (e.g., the device being used for a specific function, for a specific period of time, the device’s battery having less than half of its capacity remaining, etc.), any news-based event (e.g., the device receiving information about a particular worldly occurrence, such as a weather forecast, news report, or sport score, etc.), and combinations thereof.

Another pending patent is called “User-programmed automated communications.“ This feature allows your iPhone to perform an appropriate action based on a particular event, location, caller and other similar conditions. Say, for example, it’s your wife’s birthday. This new feature will allow your iPhone to automatically send an SMS to your wife greeting her on her special day.

Last, but certainly not the least, there’s also a “Systems and methods for intelligent and customizable communications between devices” that’s also waiting for patent approval. Simply put, these allow you to set up your iPhone to respond accordingly and differently to your various contacts depending on your current situation and availability.

As you can see, these new iPhone features is all about automation, but being that these are all just patent applications, there’s really no guarantee that these will make it into the real world. These do, however, give us an idea of what to expect, and based on what we’ve seen so far, it sure looks good. How about you guys? What do you make of these iPhone features waiting for patent approval?