Nokia wants to keep up with their competitors through evolved touchscreen-enabled devices

Jul 2, 2007 13:17 GMT  ·  By

Nokia has closed a licensing agreement with Immersion in order to benefit from the achievements of the VibeTonz technology coming from this company. This is one of the first initiatives that Nokia has taken in order to line up to the general tendencies of exploiting the sense of touch in its devices.

Tactile feedback is one of the most evolved types of performance that mobile phones have to offer nowadays. Most leading mobile phone producers have already used it on several products until now, but Nokia has shown little interest in the possibilities of this technology.

That time has come to an end, as they are now seriously considering to adopt this feature which has been appreciated by other leading communication companies. Tactile feedback has a large number of uses, including better and easier interaction between handsets and their users.

Another use for this performance can be considered that of improving execution time, reducing error rates and information capacity. Touchscreens stand at the grounds of this technology and brings a large number of improvements in several actions that users might have to perform on their devices. Mobile games have chances of providing interactivity similar to that provided by console games. Moreover, audio and visual effects can be considerably enhanced through tactile cues for events.

"With VibeTonz technology, Nokia can very purposefully access the sense of touch and add value throughout the mobile device", said Victor Viegas, CEO at Immersion. Moreover, "This license with Nokia supports the potential for very widespread use of our VibeTonz System -- and the VibeTonz System supports the potential for a much fuller, more multisensory experience for users", which makes it an equally profitable agreement.

The agreement closed between Nokia and Immersion will grant the Finnish company rights over using the VibeTonz technology in its mobile phones worldwide. Moreover, Immersion will help Nokia in the process of creating proper applications and content for the products which will be using their technology.