October 12, 2005
Phone jolt
One of this week's inventions discovered by favorite Barry Fox, who trawls the world's weird and wonderful patent applications, is a cellphone that knows just how violently to vibrate. [via New Scientist]
"How many times have you missed a call when the phone is on "silent" and it is too loose in a pocket to feel it vibrate?
It must be a recurring problem for engineers at Toshiba in Tokyo, Japan, as they have come up with a way to make the vibrations more noticeable.
Their flip-open phone has a sensor pin to detect how tightly closed it is. From this thesensors can tell, for example, if the phone has been popped into a loose pocket or tucked into a tight one close to the owner�s body.
When a call or message comes in, the sensor checks the pressure and adjusts the vibration strength accordingly. High pressure, meaning a tight fit, will result in just a gentle shake. But a loose fit will result in an almighty judder, hopefully enough to grab the user's attention. Read phone jolt patent here.
Related, sort of:
-- The touchy-feely side of telecoms - Following a previous post entitled New Cell Phones Will Reach Out and Slap Someone, thanks to touch sensation technology, called haptics, New Scientist has a lengthy piece on Samsung's new mobile phone as well as other interesting applications of haptics technology.
"Not only will it be able to send images and streaming video, but the phone can vibrate in such a way that you can add the sensation of a playful tickle to your text message, or make the person on the other end of the phone feel as if their handset has slapped them across the face".
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