Can you miss a call when your skin vibrates on getting a call on your cell phone?  The answer is a definite no, and this has been made possible by the techies at Nokia.

Nokia has filed an application for a technology where haptic tattoos, crafted from magnetic ink on the user’s body, will vibrate when a call or alert comes to the mobile phone of the user. The application proposes “a material attachable to skin, the material capable of detecting a magnetic field and transferring a perceivable stimulus to the skin, wherein the perceivable stimulus relates to the magnetic field.” The material can be anything such as a metal worn on skin, a removable tattoo or a tattoo attached to the skin. The procedure for getting such a tattoo will be normal, only the ink will differ. In this case, the ink used for the tattoo will be composed of ferromagnetic or paramagnetic compounds, which will detect the signals coming to the phone, and make the tattoo vibrate. The vibrations can also differ based on the person calling the user or the type of signal received by the cell phone, such as a call, text message, reminder, etc.

The patent application can be accessed here.

Although the technology might prove useful in certain circumstances, a utility versus wackiness analysis is advisable before you decide to get that eternal symbol of tech-slavery on your body. And, of course, God bless the souls of those husbands whose wives will get them tattooed so next time they don’t miss calls when attending an important meeting.

Contributed by Rajni Mishra