Apple recently claimed that the core component Taptic Engine of iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro are totally made of recycled rare earth elements. Rare earth in Taptic Engine mainly served to Neodymium Taptic Engine magnets, and even accounted for a quarter of the total rare earth amount in iPhone according to the relevant data.

What is Taptic Engine?

The vibration function is the most-neglected function to the mobile phone users, but this function has a very important role in our daily life in actuality. Mobile phone will regularly vibrate with message or telegram under the silent mode which remind users do not miss. And nowadays, vibration has been more of an experiential function, such as vibration sense of virtual buttons during text input or vibrating effect of recoil force in shooting game. The vibration is generated by vibration motor in mobile phone and it can be classified into rotor motor and linear motor according to the vibration principle. Rotor motor has the advantages of simple manufacture process and low cost, but there are also some problems include slow start-up and large size which directly determine the decline of rotor motor against a background of thinner trend. Linear motor can convert electricity to mechanical energy directly and drive spring mass to do linear motion thus generate vibration. The linear motor can be further divided into transverse linear motor and longitudinal linear motor. Transverse linear motor can vibrate through both X-axis and Y-axis, then obtained relatively longer vibration stroke, higher start-up, controllable vibration direction and compact structure which will be more advantageous to the reduce the body thickness of mobile phone.

Currently, more and more mobile phone manufacturers equip transverse linear motor for their flagship products, but in fact, Apple is the originator in this area. Apple has firstly equipped transverse linear motor “Taptic Engine” in their smart watch, then abandoned previous eccentric rotor motor and start to utilize Taptic Engine from iPhone 6s.

About Taptic Engine Magnets

The working principle of Taptic Engine magnets can refer our previous article about linear motor magnets. In reality, Apple has strictly product standard regard to the Taptic Engine magnets, and we may find some new surprise in next generation of products.