"Hold that phone!" might well be the clarion call from Immersion but not quite in the way you might initially suppose. Immersion, a company heavily involved as a leading developer and licensor of touch feedback technology, working with companies such as Logitech, Saitek and ThrustMaster, want you to grip your mobile handset and enjoy the tactile experience of the vibrating sensations that are now possible - admittedly from just one current model from a single operator. So just what is this technology and how might it affect the mobile phone experience/

Originally announced back at the start of 2003, the Immersion technology is based on haptics which could be described as the science of touch. Entitled VibeTonz, this technology is made up of two elements. These are the VibeTonz Studio SDK and the VibeTonz Mobile Player.

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Content designers can use the VibeTonz Studio to create and implement the various touch sensations that can be used to complement ring tones, games and even aspects of the user interface. Imagine, for example, "hapticons" (the tactile equivalent of emoticons) to add the personal touch sensation to messages or specific vibrations to identify individual callers. Of course games are an obvious area for the use of force-feedback type additions. We have already seen the tactile phenomena make inroads into mainstream gaming with tactile enhanced controllers whether of the joystick, racing wheel or game pad genre. Already joining the party with games making use of this VibeTonz technology in the mobile games market are leading players such as Superscape, I-Play and eFusion.

Hardware taking advantage of the Immersion patented technology will need to embed the VibeTonz Mobile Player into their equipment. This lightweight player uses standard hardware components. It is capable of using the memory and CPU cycles of a wide range of mobile handsets. However, at present, there is a distinct lack of mobile phone models supporting this technology.

In fact there is just one handset announced although Immersion is in talks with other manufacturers. Currently, to experience this tactile "revolution", you are limited to the Samsung E770 which comes with embedded games from eFusion. Downloadable games seem to be restricted to I-play's "King of Fights" and "Andretti Racing" by Superscape at the time of writing but hopefully we can expect to see more phones and games over the coming months.

My initial impression of the various tactile sensations available with ring tones and one of the embedded games was disappointing. In defence of VibeTonz I should point out that I suffer from a tingling sensation in both hands which might have affected the experience but I had great trouble trying to distinguish between the various effects. To be honest they all felt the same when competing with my in-built tactile interference.

Pricing for the VibeTonz enhanced Samsung E770 will depend on the type of Orange contract that is taken out. As yet Orange is unable to quote a price for the phone purchased on a pay-as-you-go basis.