Scent Texting

Behind every great experience – whether it’s a fabulous meal or a walk on the beach – there are not only sights and sounds, but aromas as well. And the sense of smell is known to be a powerful stimulant for eliciting memories, reducing stress and evoking emotions. Now there’s a way to capture those aromas – and even share them with your friends – with a new device called the oPhone.

The system consists of a base station (oPhone Duo) and an iPhone app (oSnap). To send a “scent” message, simply take a photo and tag it with up to eight of 32 available basic aromas. When used in combination, these are capable of generating up to 300,000 smells. The recipient of your oNote will receive a link to the photo as well as the aromatic notes you’ve attached. So, provided they have an oPhone Duo, they can experience the sights, sounds and smells as if they were there.

The hardware is available for purchase on the company’s Indiegogo crowd-funding page. In addition to the base station, a variety of oChips (aromatic cartridges) are available with more specific “aroma vocabularies” such as foods and coffees. Shipments are scheduled to begin in April 2015.