".. vibration in patterns to show the difference between a call, an SMS, an email"
This is genius. Why doesn't my phone do this now? Sure, I have different audible tones for reminders/sms/email/calls but most of the time my phone is in vibrate-only.
I think we will end up with watches similar to those you describe. I imagine they'll have more functions than alerting you though. A device in constant contact with the skin could likely do a whole bunch of health monitoring.
By default, iPhones vibrate once for emails, twice for texts.
Through the accessibility settings, you can set completely custom vibrations for each of the contacts in your address book (e.g. you could make morse code of each of their names)
Maybe better for people with clothes that hold phones tighter against their skin (?) or for owners of other phones (I'm a blackberry man), but personally I often don't notice vibrations in my pocket, I definitely wouldn't notice patterns. Whereas on the wrist it can be quieter (no more BZZZZZ "oh look, my phone's on silent haha") and gentler, yet more noticeable.
I wrote a Python script for my Nokia N900 that vibrated the text of a SMS in Morse code. It was an interesting idea but only lasted a day as I don't know More code well at all.
Ye olde BlackBerry would let you set custom vibration patterns per-app. It's technically possible on Android too, but most apps don't take advantage of it (including the built-in apps, negating the usefulness of such a thing)
This is genius. Why doesn't my phone do this now? Sure, I have different audible tones for reminders/sms/email/calls but most of the time my phone is in vibrate-only.
I think we will end up with watches similar to those you describe. I imagine they'll have more functions than alerting you though. A device in constant contact with the skin could likely do a whole bunch of health monitoring.