The Onyx Concept

You need to check this out...this is very very slick!

Synaptics, in partnership with industrial design studio Pilotfish, collaborated in the design of the next-generation phone concept, Onyx. Enabled through Synaptics clear, capacitive sensing technology, Onyx illustrates the future of mobile communications by combining an intelligent and adaptive user interface with sleek industrial design and next-generation user interaction design.

 

Why Onyx?

The focus of the Onyx project was to illustrate how Synaptics' revolutionary clear capacitive touch screen can push design and interaction boundaries through collaborative design. By combining Synaptics enabling technology, interaction design proficiency and concept prototyping capabilities with Pilotfish's user interface and industrial design expertise, the Onyx concept illustrates what is possible when a thoughtful approach is used to incorporate new technology in the mobile environment.

Interaction Design

The Onyx concept acts as a remote for your life. And because life is activity based, not application based, the concept illustrates how applications such as phone, GPS, music, teleconference and calendar events can work simultaneously. The Onyx concept does not base its experience on treating applications as separate windows or entities that work in isolation. Rather, the Onyx concept seamlessly integrates functions into activity based experiences.

Synaptics Capacitive Sensing

The Onyx concept is enabled through Synaptics ClearPad technology, a new capability under development within Synaptics. ClearPad is a thin, high resolution capacitive touch screen that can be placed over any viewable surface for finger input. ClearPad enables a dynamic and adaptive user interface that eliminates the need for mechanical buttons on handheld devices. This allows mobile designers to increase LCD size to support the content and functionality available for today�s handheld devices. Additionally, 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.

ClearPad is based on Synaptics' proprietary sensing technology, and will offer unique capabilities such as two finger input, proximity sensing, text entry and high resolution finger input that can dramatically improve and enhance the user experience with a touch screen.

Where can I get Onyx?

The Onyx concept is purely a concept platform designed to encourage discussion within the mobile community. Onyx will not be launched by Synaptics or any mobile phone OEMs. The enabling capacitive ClearPad technology is expected to be productized and available to OEMs by the end of the year.

Source:  Engadget article by Peter Rojas

 

Click read more below to learn a little more about Onyx