eli5 what goes on inside your phone when it vibrates
In: 2217
[removed]
The original way was to attach a semi-circle weight to the end of a motor and have it spin. That creates a vibration in all directions. Stronger vibrations are achieved by spinning the motor faster. You will find these in all game controllers.
Apple’s patented way – for the iPhone, iPad and MacBook, is to have a piece of metal sat on a rail, between two magnets. By activating one magnet at a time, they can move the central metal piece back and forth to create the vibrations. The faster they switch each magnet on and off, determines the strength of the vibration.
Metal rod with tiny weights spins on a motor. Take a ball, tie a 2 in string to a pencil, spin it really fast. Tiny version powered by battery, circuit and engineering.
A little weighted disc that spins on a motor. It’s heavier on side so the disc wobbles causing the phone to shake.
It’s actually impressive how basic of a function it is and how used it is in our lives.
You have a coil & a magnet. When you pulse electricity through the coil, the magnet moves back & forth, which generates vibrations. Headphones & speakers work in almost the exact same way to produce sound.
There are also some phones that use a small electric motor to spin an uneven weight (sort of like what happens when a load of clothes in the washing machine is unbalanced). This is the same method that’s commonly used in video game controllers, back massagers, and other things that vibrate.
There’s a small electric motor with unbalanced weights on it. When it spings the weights around very fast, due to them being unbalanced it makes the phone vibrate. It’s the same with vibrating controllers for game consoles or other vibrating devices.
Some devices like vibrating massagers or tattoo machines use a different system because they’re usually after a specific kind of motion, usually reciprocating.
[removed]
If you break the iPhone screen at the top in the right way you can expose the mechanism that does this. I had a friend with a busted phone and it was pretty cool. It’s a tiny little spinny thing.
Latest Answers