Nokia cellphones go touchy-feely with Immersion's VibeTonz

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 03 July 2007 02:12

Business IT - Technology

Nokia has licensed 'haptics' technology from Immersion Corporation that will enable it to incorporate a wide range of tactile feedback in it cellphones: for example specific vibrations associated with different ringtones and with different touch-screen-press commands.

The move by the world's largest handset manufacturer could do much to fulfilling market researchers' forecasts for massive uptake of this type of technology. Stuart Robinson, director of the Handset Component Technologies service at global research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics, was reported in January saying: "We believe that market conditions are almost ripe for an explosion in touchscreen phones, and that by 2012 as many as 40 percent of mobile phones could be using some form of touch sensitive technology."

Nokia has obtained a long-term license for Immersion's VibeTonz tactile feedback system for mobile devices that gives it the right to use the technology in its mobile devices sold worldwide. Immersion will also supply a software developers kit to the Nokia Forum developer community enabling developers to create downloadable applications and content that makes use of tactile feedback.

According to Immersion its technology "allows touchscreen-based mobile devices to provide unmistakable tactile cues in response to touchscreen presses. It can enliven mobile games with touch feedback similar to that found in console games; heighten the music and ringtone fun-factor by 'turning up the sub-woofers' with a vibe beat; make operation easier and more intuitive by pairing audio/visual with tactile cues for events such as call dropped, ringing, and busy; and make alerts more discernible and memorable by varying how they feel, from a reverberating gong effect to a subtle tapping."

VibeTonz technology is already available on a number of Samsung handsets offered in the US by Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Alltel and MetroPCS; in Korea by SK Telecom; in China by China Unicom and in Europe by Orange (UK and France) and T-Mobile (UK and Germany. Users can download VibeTonz enabled games and ringtones from