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Samsung launches first VibeTonz-enabled touchscreen phone

Get set for more good vibrations in your mobile games

Samsung launches first VibeTonz-enabled touchscreen phone
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We wrote about Immersion Corporation's VibeTonz technology this time last year, when Orange launched the Samsung E770 phone with the appropriate gubbins inside. VibeTonz provides variable vibration like you'd see in a PlayStation 2 or Xbox joypad, and so has clear applications for mobile games.

Today, Samsung launched another VibeTonz phone, the SCH-W559, the first touchscreen handset to include the technology.

Admittedly, this is more about having on-screen keys that make the phone vibrate when you press them, giving proper feedback, and so hasn't much to do with mobile games. And the phone is so far only available from, erm, one Chinese operator.

That said, it could have applications for gaming going forward, with touchscreen games that give you more subtle feedback through vibration. Immersion says VibeTonz is capable of a whole gamut of effects, including reverberating gongs and subtle tapping. How about subtly tapping a gong?

Hopefully we'll see more phones with VibeTonz inside coming out in Europe during 2007, so mobile game developers can start getting to grips with its potential.

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)