4. The Argument In Favor of Haptics

Manufacturers are buying into Immersion’s tech. Nokia has just launched its first touch screen phone, the 5800 Xpress Music, which has haptic feedback for menus and the on-screen keyboard. Expect more touch screen devices from Nokia in 2009, “in particular an N-Series class of device,” Jonathan Arber, a research analyst for IDC, said.

Samsung, LG, Motorola and some media player manufacturers have been producing devices with touch feedback for more than a year, including the best-selling Sprint Instinct and the LG View, Viewty and Voyager, as well as a string of devices available only in Asian markets.

Consumers have good reason to want this technology in their phones, too — it appears to increase efficiency. In studies, users can easily identify up to 85 different haptic rhythms or "tactons" (the tactile equivalent of icons). That’s useful for alerts, so you can tell who is calling, whom a new message is from or whether you’ve just been out-bid on eBay. But finer control can also improve typing accuracy.

Researchers at Glasgow University compared a Treo 750 with a QWERTY keyboard to the standard virtual keyboard on the Samsung i718 smartphone and to a touch keyboard that the researchers designed for the i718 using VibeTonz haptic feedback. They added different tactons so users could tell when they were touching a button, touching the home keys (F and J), clicking on a button or touching the edge of a button. Then they asked users to type in a poem, either while seated in a lab or standing on a moving subway train.

The touch screen keyboard was substantially better with haptic feedback than without it. The keyboard was also almost as good as a physical QWERTY keyboard, while adding a more expensive linear actuator improved typing performance even more. The users also found typing on screen was less annoying and frustrating with the haptic feedback.

The research team has developed an experimental haptic keyboard for the iPhone that you can try out here. Though the iPhone does not incorporate haptics or tactile feedback of any kind today, you can never count Apple out of a hot area of consumer electronics. The company has applied for a patent on its own brand of touch screen feedback, so wait and see.