Let's Make Your Smartphone Smarter!

Want to set different vibrations for different contacts? Here's an easy way to do just that.

Many times, we put our phone on vibrate and it's in our pocket or purse. It vibrates and, of course, we look to see who it is. We can select preprogrammed vibrations or make our own.

Let's start with the iPhone. Go to a contact you want to change the vibration for—maybe your significant other. Once at the contact select Edit, scroll down to ringtone and tap. 

Next, find Vibration and tap. 

Now you have the screen where you can select a new vibration or even make your own.

Here's the Create New Vibration screen:

On some Androids, open your Contacts app and find the contact. Tap to edit it. When the contact opens, scroll to the bottom of the page. Select More then locate Vibration pattern and it will be set to default. When you tap on this option, your Android device will open to the stock vibration patterns it has. Now you can select from patterns such as Basic call, Heartbeat, Ticktock, Waltz, and Zig-zig-zig.

Select the next contact you want to have a customized vibration for and repeat the steps. Disclaime, unlike Apple, Android is the operating system on different brand smartphones and not all are created equal. If your phone doesn't have this feature or you want more options, including making your own custom vibrations, you might want to consider a third-party app available on the Google Play Store.

Personally, I love this mostly unknown feature. I'm a keep my phone in my pocket with the ringer off kind of guy. The different vibrations help me know whether I need to pull my phone out or ignore until later. Rather than having so many different vibrations to try to remember, I have all my family members with the same vibration, I have all my friends with their own vibration.

As a REALTOR®, think about setting up a vibration for active clients, a different vibration for support contacts like home inspectors, title companies and loan officers. You can design your own system to help you be more organized. (I just had a flashback to my Palm days—do not set up so many different vibrations you can't keep track!)

I hope some of you will try this technique. It's so simple, but the benefits are many!

Dick Betts is a national speaker, trainer and consultant. Learn more at www.DickBetts.com