See and Feel the iPhone

A recent patent backs up an idea I had about a haptic interface for the iPhone (it's not a new idea even for the iPhone):

The proposed solution is the adoption of "haptic" display technologies which allow for some tactile feedback from touch screen displays. Apple proposes including a grid of piezoelectronic actuators that can be activated on command. By fluctuating the frequency of these actuators, the user will "feel" different surfaces as their finger moves across it.

Haptic Technology for the iPhone

One of the questions that often occurs is how could you improve on the iPhone without changing the form factor too much. One of the things that occurred to me was mentioned was a keyboard. But it would be nice to have a keyboard that worked as well as the current one does (well better) so that it could work in both portrait and landscape mode. Is that crazy talk?

Well the idea would be to use electroheological fluid to create a keyboard dynamically. I came across some discussion on how to use it for braille and it should work equally well for creating a QWERTY keyboard - although power usage maybe a problem. For more technical discussion (and I haven't really read it except for the practical use in virtual reality gloves), Haptic Interfaces Using
Electroheological Fluids.