I thought this was only me–I’m sure I feel the stupid thing vibrating when it’s in my pocket, resting on my thigh. But nothing was stirring, except my own proprioception. I used to think I had just missed a call, but that didn’t pan out.
Do the comments by the doctors in the cite seem correct–one guy says possible interference does set it off briefly (which I think an engineer could easily verify); another suggests it is a new miscue of the psychological setting-up of physical perception: phone-owners have become hypervigilant, yet apparently not discriminatory enough for the starter’s whistle, that a perception of a door key shifting in your pocket or a simple crumpling of your pants will be physically assigned to the sense of a vibration.
I think that is a fascinating issue, how our biological/physical mind/nervous system perceptual apparatus is, if true, being altered by technology.
It’s a different thing than, say, “look left before crossing,” which is a higher order response. This is at the psychophysical level, like when regular water will feel colder after your hands have been in hot water, and many many other similar “miscues.”
In write low level drivers for cell phones. I’ve owned the vibrator driver on a device. I’ve also owned the battery life issues on a device. We really don’t like it when the vibrator goes off on it’s own, and take steps to prevent it if the design has a susceptibility.
Watered down technical details:
There are basically two ways to control the vibrator
The vibrator always has power, but also has an enable pin. We have a single line that we toggle to enable or disable the vibrator. In this scenario, a stray pulse could theoretically turn the vibrator on. But the pulses that come by are so fast - milliseconds are a long time in this context - that you’d never feel it. In fact, the vibrator wouldn’t really be going, since it’s a motor. It wouldn’t have a chance to spin up in that time.
The vibrator doesn’t have an on-off switch. Instead, we enable the power supply (or switch in a ground). In this case, there’s no realistic way for noise to cause the vibrator to turn on.
I’ll add the comment that I feel phantom vibrations..even when I don’t have my phone in my pocket. I’ve always assumed the mechanism is based on feeling something move - my jeans, as I walk, perhaps - and my mind associating it with the phone.
I’ve suspected my car hitting a frequency that makes my phone resonate with my leg flesh. I also think I’ve seen layers of fabric vibrate when they align themselves and slip over one another, like a vibrational Moire pattern.
But then I also think I get a particularly nutty version of hypersensitivity.
I’ve also experienced phantom vibrations. When it happens, the impression I have afterwards was that it didn’t feel exactly the same as a real cellphone vibration.
That probably doesn’t make sense. I’ll try to explain.
It all happens very fast; within a few seconds.
I feel it, pull the phone out, and realize that there’s no call. I think that, during the time I’m retrieving the phone, my brain hasn’t even finished processing the sensation and that the processing occurs as I’m reflexively pulling out the phone.
So at the same moment I’m looking at the phone, my brain has finished processing the “vibration” and realized the mistake. Does that make sense?
And I have nothing to base that on other than reading some studies after I experienced the same thing.
After that I tried some experiments with myself. First off - I never got the “phantom vibrate” with the phone in my hand. Even walking around, talking and fully engaged with other activities if the phone was in my hand it was either a real alert or nothing. I ascribe this to my hand being my normal “input device” for vibration for most of my life (steering wheels, yokes, pencils, etc) and thus already fine tuned.
Second, I seemed to notice that the phantom vibrate occurred more often if I was wearing baggy shorts or anticipating a call/text. Both situations put me into “hyper-alert” mode - the baggy shorts because I knew it would be more difficult to feel the vibration, and the expectation because I knew “something” should be happening.
This is not too surprising to me. Have you ever been outside at night, thinking about bears or aliens or whatever and then suddenly SEEN something? Only to find out a few seconds later that nothing was there? Or hear something you were afraid of, only to find out it never happened?
I think it just our bodies tuning themselves to a unique stimuli - we’ve been doing it forever, it just so happens that this time it involves a piece of technology in our pocket.
But you added another piece to the puzzle. We’re not used to using our thighs for fine sensory input. In fact the nerves there and the related brain circuitry aren’t “designed” for that. Now we’re trying to use those tissues, some of the least discriminating on the body, to sense and differentiate sensations that haven’t even existed for most of our evolutionary history, and, predictably, having difficulty doing so.
FWIW, anecdotal evidence, I not only feel phantom buzzes, I often hallucinate a phantom ringtone. I think we’re all so highly conditioned to respond – fast! – to these things, we fall prey to such false positives.
Likely an old evolutionary trait. Better to jump aside in pointless nervous reaction when there isn’t a tiger (or lion) nearby…than not to jump when there is.
I think you humans have evolved to the point where your cell phones are part of you, and when you leave it at home, or simply just have it turned off, it’s like getting a limb amputated, only it’s like getting your cell phone amputated. Then you get to deal with the “phantom phone” syndrome.
Having occasionally experienced a phantom vibration, only to discover that my phone was not even in my pocket at the time, I put it down to other sources that give rise to a similar “vibration” feeling, such as fabric moving against fabric.
I agree that there is a psychological phenomena here. I use a pager at work. Not long ago, I transferred into a job where I received roughly a page every five minutes. Most of these were automated status updates, but some were fairly important work requests. After a while, I noticed that I only felt my pager vibrating when I *didn’t *receive a page.
I don’t carry my phone often enough, nor do I set it to vibrate, for this to happen to me.
But years ago I lived with a woman who had a cat, and sometimes the cat would walk around on the bed. The cat was being particularly annoying one night, until I realized that both the cat and the woman had moved out. I could still feel the cat walking on me every night for about two weeks.
Yes, I experience this sometimes as well. I know that it is not the phone inadvertantly vibrating, because it’s happened when I didn’t even have my blackberry in my pocket.
Sure there is, but it is not a new one; what we perceive, or seem to perceive, is, and always has been, as much a function of what we are primed for, and trying to attend to, as much as of the actual external stimuli. If cell phone buzzes are important to you, and occur (as they do) at unpredictable times, you are liable to hallucinate cell phone buzzes. If ocelots are important to you, and appear in your world unpredictably, you will be liable to hallucinate ocelots.
I get it too, and (like others) sometimes when the phone’s not in my pocket. As davidm mentioned, it doesn’t feel exactly the same as an actual ring but the buzzing sensation is similar and distinctly perceptible, such that I always react to it.
Apparently this phenomenon is quite common. I suspect that, after you get used to the phone buzzing in your pocket, your brain interprets any tactile stimulation in the area as a phone call.
