YouTube channel 'Gary Explains' has an interesting video up, embedded below, on the criminally under-reported inclusion of 'HD Haptics' in Android 12, now here on the Google Pixels and imminent on many other Android smartphones. As he explains though, the phones do need the right hardware and chip support to take advantage of these real time haptic outputs...

Here's the video:

Which is all well and good, and I learned something here, since I don't believe this has been mentioned anywhere else. But as Gary said, the phone has to have a) the right electronics to synchronise the haptics and audio, and b) a haptic 'engine' that can deliver the goods.

So, for example, your average Android phone's vibrator won't be enough to take advantage of HD Haptics. Gary points out that the current Pixel 6 devices have the right chippery, but I'd respond that even the Pixels don't have a proper haptic engine. Or 'Taptic engine' as Apple calls it, having included an industry-leading haptic system in all iPhones for the last few years.

Gary concludes that all this is really just raising awareness that HD Haptics should be on your checklist when researching your next smartphone, though again I'd chip in and point out that Sony has included both real time audio haptics and a decent linear haptic engine in most of its mid-range to flagship phones for the last three years. And it works fabulously. As I reported on in gory detail here...

But yes, the likes of Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, etc. will one day soon catch up with what Apple has been doing since 2015 and then some time later will catch up with what Sony has been doing since 2019...(!)