061311cellphone.jpgHow many times have you been at a movie theater, museum or anywhere else in public when the intrusive sound of another person's ringtone violated your eardrums? It's happening with more frequency, and sometimes at extremely inopportune times (we had someone's cell go off loudly during a funeral). Custom ringtones can be a fun way to personalize your celly, but come on, do we need to hear your Wiz Khalifa ringer in the middle of a movie, playa? That's why we're a big proponent of keeping your mobile on vibrate (in fact, we never have our ringer on), and Apple is planning to provide a creative way to customize those good vibrations specific to the person calling you so you don't have to be THAT guy or girl.

061311newvibration.jpg9to5Mac reports the upcoming iOS 5 will allow users to assign customizable vibration patterns specific to your contacts. This custom vibration can also be partnered up with a LED flashing, for times when you need visual cues someone important (or not) is giving you a call.

First you need to enable custom vibrations by checking the Custom Vibrations button in the General > Accessibility > Custom Vibrations section of the Settings app. From there, you can assign unique vibration patterns to people in Contacts, similar to ringtones. Just pick a contact in the Contacts app, hit the Edit button and tap Vibration right below the Ringtone field. You can pick among five preset vibration patterns (Alert, Heartbeat, Rapid, S.O.S. and Symphony) or create your own using the recording interface.

This option is probably not going to cull the rampant disregard for polite public manners, but perhaps this keen feature will be novel enough to gain foothold amongst a few willing to keep their mobile devices hushed...something almost anyone can appreciate.

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