Since the original iPhone’s inception, Apple’s been expected to add haptic feedback technology to its iconic smartphone. This hasn’t happened to this date, despite several Apple patent filings related to an enhanced haptic feedback on mobile devices.
A new Chinese rumor has been making rounds on the web Thursday, reviving the old-standing rumor which calls for an iPhone with haptic feedback.
According to sources, the next iPhone(s) will incorporate tactile feedback in order to augment the sense of touch with subtle vibrations when virtual keys are pressed…
GforGames passes along a sketchy report by Chinese website Laoyaoba [Google translate] which boils down to the iPhone 6 supposedly adopting haptic feedback.
Apple is thought to be using a new kind of a tactile feedback linear motor said to be “more intelligent” and capable of producing different types of subtle vibrations – even emitting different vibrations depending on the screen area being touched.
Due to its sophistication, the new linear motor is about two to three times pricier compared to that inside the iPhone 5s, which costs around $0.6.
About two years ago, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published an Apple patent highlighting a technology described as a “wildly intelligent multi-tiered haptics system” for mobile devices.
Apple’s take on haptic feedback could theoretically allow future iPhones to actually deform its screen so that the buttons and other UI elements would pop right out of the screen to give it 3D depth.
This would make pressing virtual buttons feel like touching physical ones, using what the patent describes as a “grid of piezoelectronic actuators that can be activated on command.”
The invention would fluctuate the frequency of the actuators to produce different surfaces as a user’s finger moves across the screen.
This is all of course highly theoretical and we’re not putting much faith into today’s report, even more so knowing that most Apple patents never see the light of day.