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Rumble Pak for Mobile TV??

According to Engadget, LG gets ready to "rumble live mobile TV." In other words, broadcasters can rattle your phone or flash LEDs in sync to what you're watching. It is not limited to South Korea, but it's also patented in 20 other countries.

Now, I don't know whether I would feel comfortable about my phone rumbling while I'm watching TV. As bad as this may sound, what if a college student watches mobile TV during class just to fight boredom and/or keep from falling asleep. A rumbling mobile phone would make it pretty obvious that one is not paying any attention. This also concerns any other scenario where being discreet is necessary. I'm just thinking about the aggregate noise if everyone's phone on the "El" rumbles because of a Cubs/Sox home run. Although I doubt everyone in Chicago (let alone America which is about two years behind E. Asia in terms of adoption of mobile technology) will have this feature on the phone, it would be nice to know whether one can turn off this feature.

Also, mobile TV does require people to have fast networks and big screen phones. Unfortunately, the average American user does not have access to fast 3G networks yet, and they are not willing to pay for a QVGA or higher display. In addition, it would be better if my mobile TV was in the wide-screen format rather than 3:4. As much as I ranted about Helio's initial launch, I actually like their new phones that were released by Samsung (Heat and Drift) and the dual-slider Ocean. Call me a sucker for pretty phones, but one of the few ways you can get someone to shell out lots of money is to have a phone that stands out from the rest. As America is full of RAZRs and flip phones, having a "slider" is another way to separate us from the masses. Sliders are super popular in Europe, so maybe I'm writing with some bias. I also saw the new NTT DoCoMo phones that were announced. Those are the kind of flip phones that I want to see in the North American market. Check out those gigantic screens which are perfect for viewing videos and photos.

posted by Koh @ 6:09 PM