Friday 15 February 2008

Breath-test phone

Breath Phone From Times Online, Mousetrap Technologies 14.02.08:

From the school of products that remind you of your inadequacies (and hopefully prompt you to buy stuff) comes this phone that measures the smelliness of your breath.

All you do is hold the handset up to your mouth, blow briefly on a sensor at one end, and in ten seconds it rates your halitosis on a scale of one to ten – based on the sulphur content in your breath.

The phone, which is still a prototype and is not expected to come out until 2009 at the earliest, also measures heart rate, body fat, and can be used as a pedometre. (You put it in your pocket and it senses your leg movement, so the theory goes.)

Perhaps it should have an inbuilt garlic sensor too, for checking whether you're up to talking to people after a strongly seasoned meal.  And maybe the second-generation models can have a breath-freshening spray built in?  No?  Just a thought.

3 comments:

  1. Maybe there's actually a practical use in this?
    Not with bad-breath - I think it's wrong that certain people need technology to tell them they need to suck on a polo - but alcohol.

    Your phone can tell you if you're safe to drive. The technology's out there...

    However, the only safe thing is to have none for the road (end public service paragraph)

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  2. I can't believe Apple haven't thought of this first!

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  3. Yeah, that's a good one, ASP. I hadn't thought of that. Still these self diagnosis gadgets are often fraught with problems - and for one which dictates whether of not a person's act will be deemed illegal, the stakes are particularly high.
    I can imagine the scene now "but my phone told me I was safe to driver, officer. Honestly". Great stuff.

    I don't think apple users ever suffer from dodgy breath - all iphone users think they're perfect, for instance.

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