Haptic, obviously the latest mobile buzzword

Just after news of the MyOrigo with it’s haptic display, the International Herald Tribune thinks Cellphones of the future may be tactile wonderlands.

Basically, haptics is the process of providing feedback using the vibrator in the phone (when I first heard about the MyOrigo having a “haptic display” I thought it meant it had some sort of “squidgy” layer over the top which helped provide feedback) similar to the force feedback joysticks available.

The IHT article is about the technology provided by Immersion, who reckon their technology could augment ringtones (by providing downloadable “ringvibes?”), improve chat (you could send a high-five vibration cue, or a belly-laugh vibration cue) and improve UI feedback and mobile games.

I guess the “ringvibes” (do you think if I use the term often enough it’ll become the name for them? ;-) would be as likely as ringtones are, and I think the UI enhancement possibilities are really interesting. Not sure about the chat enhancement though, I think it’d need a decent UI to allow people to choose them easily, although I guess it could auto insert them like MS Messenger does with emoticons - that might be cool…