Haptic feedback in smartphones is becoming more useful each passing day

What is Haptic feedback?

If you don’t know what haptic feedback is, it is the buzz your phone creates during an incoming call in silent mode, the vibration you feel while dialing a number, and the buzz that you feel while you type on the virtual keyboard of your smartphone.

It is a very ignored feature, but it has been present in smartphones for a long time and even in the basic phones before that used to have it.

It is a feature that makes the user experience more immersive when it is implemented properly, it is so perfect that users don’t feel it distinctively. It just becomes part of a single unifying experience.

How do smartphones create haptic feedback?

Haptic feedback is created using vibrating components. In most cases, the vibrating component is a very small motor that is off balance. So when the motor rotates (being off-balance), it creates a vibration, which as a result vibrates the whole phone.

How has it become so sophisticated?

Previously there used to be just one single vibrating component which was inside the phone and it used to vibrate at a single speed and style. Now some phones come with multiple vibrating components which can have different multiples speeds and styles giving a distinctive feel to different actions in the smartphone.

Why is haptic feedback necessary in smartphones?

Almost every smartphone has no buttons at all except power and volume buttons. The people who were used to devices that had physical buttons didn’t like smartphones at the start because typing on a touch screen didn’t give them the satisfying click and feel. Haptic feedback recreates that feel for them and they feel easy to type on these touch screens with the help of these vibrations.

Current use of haptic feedback in smartphones

Haptic feedback has come very far from just creating a feel for people typing on a touch screen or while dialing. They are now being used for other purposes as well. The biggest use is in smartphone gaming. Different games have different actions which create different sound effects and with those sound effects, game developers also put matching haptic feedback.

Different actions create different kinds of haptic feedback. Haptic feedback is different when you shift gears in a racing game, when you shoot bullets in a battle royal or when you change weapons in a GTA game. If you are a good player you will be able to tell the difference between two feedbacks without looking at the screen just feeling the buzz it creates.

Future of haptic feedback

The future of haptic feedback technology is very bright. Anything which makes the user experience more immersive is obviously going to stay for the long run. Thing technology is not only available in smartphones but also in game controllers. It would be interesting to see where else this technology gets implemented.

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