A Better Title

Have you ever felt that your mobile phone is vibrating, but when you checked it, noone had actually called nor messaged you? I’m sure that this has happened to everyone who has a mobile phone.

Apparently, the condition is called ringxiety, from the words “ringer” and “anxiety”. The reason, as the Wikipedia article points out, is that humans are particularly sensitive to auditory tones between 1,000 to 6,000 Hz, which most mobile phone ringers fall in. To make matters worse, the frequency range also makes it hard to pinpoint the source of the vibration. Therefore when other objects in the surroundings vibrate or emit a tone at this frequency range, the person often feel as if the mobile phone is vibrating, when actually it isn’t.

For some reason, I am very prone to this lately. The experience ranges from being distracting when I’m having a lecture or tutorial, to annoying when I’m doing my business in the toilet (I can’t possibly check my phone lest it drops into the toilet bowl). Even when the phone is in total silent mode (i.e. no vibration), sometimes it is hard to ignore the urge to check the mobile phone, even though I know that the phone can’t possibly vibrate in such a configuration.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at 8:03 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.