Send flavoured tweets, smelly texts from oPhone soon

NEW YORK, USA: What about a chocolate-flavoured tweet or a strawberry-smelling WhatsApp message to your beloved?

Soon, it would be possible to send smelly calls and text via a unique device. Called oPhone, the device is being developed by a Harvard University researcher and his team.

It is equipped with an odour chip for sending and receiving specific smells via phone call, text or social media using bluetooth and smartphone attachments.

"Scents are deconstructed by an aroma expert. The specific aroma profiles are captured and loaded into an 'oChip'," explained David Edwards, a biomedical engineering professor at Harvard.

Each 'oChip' can release thousands of unique odours for 20 to 30 seconds, he added.

Edwards teamed up with French designers Baptiste Viala and Laurent Mion to produce a working prototype that was displayed at the arts and design center Le Laboratoire in Paris recently. He believes oPhone can send complex smells to people. It could even help Alzheimer's patients recover old memories.