So I’ve had this particular cell phone for about 5 months now and for the last month or so I get random phantom vibrations. I don’t mean the phone is suddenly randomly vibrating as if I’ve received a phone call. I mean I feel a brief vibration where the phone is clippled on my belt. It even happens if I’m not wearing the phone. A couple other guys at work, my boss and his dad, also get the phantom vibration but they get it on the side they used to wear the phone. They’ve both switched sides and they get the phantom vibe on the side they no longer wear the phone on. Odd eh?
Are the three of us insane or is it a more widespread phenomenon? Are the aliens secretly implanting bluetooth vibrators in our hips because they’ve grown tired of abduction and anal probing? Are they developing the bluetooth prostate stimulator? Did I really just post that?
Sorry…it’s just that I’ve never heard anyone else mention this before, but it happens to me all the time. When I go bowling, I switch my phone to my left side so my right arm doesn’t bump the phone during my arm swing. But then I’m constantly slapping at my right side because I could swear the phone is vibrating. This also happens to me when I’m in my car and I’ve actually taken the phone off of the clip.
Yes this happens to me. I find it mostly happens to me in the car or when I am moving around. I tend to think that it does not happen if I don’t have things in my pockets.
Mine does this all the time when I have it in my pocket. It took awhile, but I finally figured it out – I was accidentally putting the phone on “silent” mode, and that little vibrate was the confirmation.
Count me in. I keep my phone in my pocket and I’m constantly thinking I feel a vibration, then pulling my phone out to find that it’s not ringing. This thread makes me feel a little less crazy.
I think the explanation may be that it’s normal to feel a certain amount of vibration in your legs, whether it’s from a cramp/spasm, something moving in the floor under you, too much coffee this morning, or whatever. Before cell phones, we just ignored it. Now that we’re specifically waiting to feel that vibration, we detect other stuff happening and get a false positive. That’s my theory anyway.
Happens to me to. I thought Cingular was just fuckin’ with me.
Someone write it up and go ask the blessed master. I want to know what is going on. And tell him not to let his SDASOB or whatever they are handle it. This is too important.
Oh my yes. I get this all of the time, whether my cell phone is in my pocket or not. In fact the muscle in my right leg (the side I most often keep my phone on) will occationally spasm at the same frequency that my phone vibrates at, which is really confusing as it takes me a second after I find that my phone isn’t there to figure out where the vibrations are coming from.
There was a Dilbert strip about this a while back. Dilbert was explaining to his doctor that he got phantom vibrations from his pager on the weekends when he wasn’t wearing it.
The doctor said that it was a known phenomenon, and they didn’t know how to cure it.
Dilbert’s response: “I don’t want to cure it, I want to relocate it.”
I have been plagued by this, and eventually came to the conclusion that it’s the pocket being pushed along the belt by body movements. Turn the torso, jacket pushes it, clip “vibrates” along belt.
This happens when it’s just loose in your coat pocket?
My precious mind-easing theory has been blown out of the water. Dammit.
Amazing. When I carry my phone, it’s always set on vibrate and in my shirt pocket. And now I feel the exact same thing whether its even there or not. A bit worried that I was having heart flutters or something. WTF is it??
Ditto, I always keep the phone in my left pants pocket and every now and then I’ll have to check the phone because I’m sure it’s vibrating. I always keep the phone on silence/vibrate. As long as it’s in my pocket I don’t miss phone calls, it’s when I take it out and set it somewhere that I miss them 'cause I’ll forget to put the phone on ‘normal’ ring.
I think the ghost vibration is from shirt/belt/pants material rubbing together in such a way as to lead me to believe it’s really the phone. BTW, this always only happens when I’m walking.
Yep, I get it too (I just keep the phone loose in a pocket). I’ve noticed when it happens, though, that I can usually continue to feel the vibration after I’ve checked the phone.
I’ve convinced myself that these vibrations are real – trucks passing by, people walking on nearby floors, micro earthquakes (I live in a place that supposedly gets 3000+ earthquakes a year, although I haven’t actually felt one in more than a decade), and other “natural” sources of vibration – especally since the impresion happens almost exclusively when I’m sitting (and therefore relatively quiet).
I think that the vibrating phone has just trained me to be more aware of these things, because the “loose” phone vibration in my pocket is relatively subtle, anyway.
So did anyone ask Cecil yet? Is he still at it, answering questions and all? Seems like the ones that show up on the home page are all really old.
BTW, me too. However, since I don’t use my phone on vibrate hardly at all anymore, I don’t feel it. When I do, I will feel it while sitting in the car, even if the phone isn’t on me. It’s been quite a while since using the vibrate feature, so I’ve not felt anything. I think that we are interpreting whatever we feel to be our cellphone, even though it’s not. Maybe we’re expecting a call, or we think “Oh yay someone wants to talk to me!” at every opportunity. What say you to my theory? :dubious:
Someone head over to the temple, the baths, the opium den… wherever Cecil is hiding and get him over here to look at this.
I’m going to posit a theory: small environmental vibrations resulting from movement, the radio, etc. sometimes result in a sympathetic vibration in the phone’s vibration mechanism.
Problem with that theory is that in my experience (and it seems to be in that of other posters here as well) the phantom vibrations occur when the phone is not present as well.
Perhaps its your pocket that has the sympathy vibrations?
I rarely get phantom vibrations, but I do on occasion accidentally “hear” my phone ringing from another room when, in fact, it has not done so. The worst part is I occasionally will instinctively scramble to get to the [non-ringing] phone and wonder why on earth I rush so much.