Synaptics; the company whose technology enables you to finger dance across your ipod playlist, has recently partnered with industrial design studio Pilotfish- (with the philosophy that hardware and software are interrelated parts of the overall experience of a product to bring you the next generation concept phone: Onyx...
The soft and outer worldly name accurately suggests the innovative design of the Onyx- a thin, high resolution capacitive touch screen that can be placed over any viewable surface for finger suggestion.

The Onyx ClearPad "eliminates the need for mechanical buttons on handheld devices,” the Synaptics claim. “This allows mobile designers to increase LCD size to support the content and functionality available for today’s handheld devices. Because ClearPad is solid state, it can be curved and mounted beneath plastics, offering mobile designers an opportunity to create sleek and stylized industrial designs.” The ClearPad will exhibit unique capabilities to improve accuracy with sensing technology such as; two finger input, proximity sensing, text entry and high resolution finger input.

The Clear Pad technology though purely concept to encourage discussion, is expected to be productized and available to OEMs by the end of the year.

It is also safe to assume, (and yes.. I know what assuming does =P)that these may appear in future ipod screens.

Touch screen showers, doors, stores....and more.
We are the living the future ladies and gents..

iLounge Via SCIFI.com