It’s a scenario that many of us dread, but if you’ve forgotten to put deodorant on, your iPhone could soon alert you.
Apple ’s next iPhone could alert you if you have body odour or bad breath, if a recent patent is to be believed.
The patent, which was spotted by Cult of Mac, describes a system that would let sensors in the iPhone recognise chemicals in the air, and detect if they smell.
The system would mainly be used to detect dangerous gases such as Carbon Monoxide, according to the patent.
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It said: "A portable communication device includes one or more sensors, a pair of electrodes associated with each sensor, and a processing circuit configured to apply a bias supply voltage to the pair of electrodes and to process output signals from the sensors.
"Each sensor is an ionic liquid sensor tuned for sensing a smell associated with a chemical species.
"The processing circuit further includes an artificial intelligence engine to enhance smell recognition capabilities of the device."
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The fact that the patent mentions a ‘smell recognition’ feature indicates that this gas-detection method could also alert you to nasty odours.
As with most patents, there’s no guarantee that Apple will actually implement the technology in any devices, let alone the next iPhone.
The next iPhone is expected to launch in September 2019 - so watch this space!
