Synaptics Onyx Concept Cellphone Almost a Reality
Twiddling your memory knobs back to August this year you might remember SlashGear’s coverage of the Onyx concept phone, designed and crafted by bespoke hardware and interface designers Synaptics and Pilotfish. With no physical controls such as the keypad, joystick or scroll wheels found on traditional phones, Onyx instead relies on a system of touch, proximity and gesture.
Built around a high-resolution LCD screen and Synaptics’ ClearPad touchscreen technology, a transparent touch-sensitive capacitive sensor, Onyx can discriminate between one and two finger use and can even tell 
when it is being held against a cheek. This opens up whole new avenues of interface design: pop-up onscreen scrollwheels for volume and moving through contact and media lists, “flicking away” text messages to send them, dragging photos and files from screen to screen.
SlashGear has been lucky enough to visit Synaptics and get a live demonstration of Onyx, from none other than their Human Interface Architect, John M. Feland. Under the ever watchful eye of Clark Foy, the company’s marketing VP, we filmed some exclusive footage of the prototype in action. The ethos of Onyx is “All About Fun”, about using technology in a humanistic way; hopefully you’ll have fun looking at what might just be the phone of the future.
Every now and then someone comes up with an idea or concept that makes you go ah ha! The concept of using dual screens on a cell phone or portable gaming device is not new. So what’s the problem? Why haven’t we seen a cell phone with two large screens? Perhaps it’s because manufacturers haven’t resolved the issue with the battery, since it does take more juice to power the dual screens. There’s also the issue of price. Dual color screen on a cell phone will definitely raise the price; someone’s going to have to eat the cost whether it’s the manufacturer or consumers.