In the last two phones I've owned they're not even hardware buttons any more, just special backlit icons below the screen that react exactly like the touchscreen above it. Which I don't like, but eh, designers love taking shit out of products these days.
> In the last two phones I've owned they're not even hardware buttons any more
They're "hardware" buttons in that they're hard-set in the hardware, but capacitive. The Galaxy Nexus has done away with even "hardware" buttons, the three black-on-white keys at the bottom are OS soft-keys and displayed on the screen, they're not even a separate and hard-wired area anymore.
