The oPhone that you see here will be very, very different from the other oPhones that we have seen in the past, for one simple reason. They all have nothing to do with this oPhone, apart from sharing what looks to be the same name. Developed by a professor at Harvard University, David Edwards, alongside his former student Rachel Field, the oPhone happens to be an app-plus-atomizer combo which will allow users to tag images with scents, before sending them using the Internet.
The oPhone would be released as a pair of cylindrical shaped receivers that will come fitted with scent chips each. These scent chips are capable of creating more than 300,000 unique smells in total, and when they run out of any more scent-creating ability, all that you need to do is to replace them. Just like ink cartridges, now how about that? A pack of four of such cartridges will cost you $20.
There is no way to run out to the nearest store and pick up the oPhone at this point in time simply because it remains as an idea, and will need to raise the necessary amount of funds via an Indiegogo campaign which is set to kick off later this June 17th. The oPhone itself will be available for $149 during the pre-order campaign, and users can download a free app that is called oSnap on the same day in order to use it to tag an image with a scent from a choice palette of aromas. There will be hotspots that sport oPhones in Paris and Cambridge which will enable folks to smell the “message” in the form of an aromatic cloud.
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