Provided you’ve explored all other possibilities, if you consistently think you’re feeling vibrations while your phone is in your pocket, yet you have no new notifications when you take it out to check, you may be experiencing a curious mental phenomenon known as phantom vibration syndrome. Essentially, your brain is misattributing some other sensation to a phone vibration, causing you to hallucinate the vibration. For example, your pants might rub against your skin, or your muscles may contract, and your brain may interpret such a stimulus as a phone vibration.
Phantom vibration syndrome is merely a hypothesis to explain something many of us have experienced and, while it has been observed in medical literature, is not an officially recognized condition. If you have double checked all the other possible causes of random vibration for an Android phone, most notably those listed in this article, and are still experiencing unexplained vibrations, it may be worth considering that you’re experiencing phantom vibration syndrome.
