If people can use their smartphones to order their dinner tonight, book a ride, or get daily fitness stats, why not to know if one has terrible body odor?
Germany-based deodorant and body products maker Nivea announced its new product dubbed Nivea Men NOSE, a mobile phone cover that works with a downloadable app to serve as an electronic nose.
Here’s how it works: a man who suddenly finds himself curious to know his level of body odor can activate the app, put the smartphone near his armpit, and allow the electronic nose to pick up smell and analyze it based on a specially created algorithm that previously evaluated the scent of 4,000 other males.
After the app “sniffs” the stench levels, it notified the user of how much he stinks.
“Our nose is so used to our own body odor that we can’t smell our own sweat,” NIVEA explained of its newest launch.
And men proved to be a strong target, as they have been found to sweat more than women yet maintain 40 percent less brain area for perceiving such odors.
NOSE’s beta version was recently demonstrated in Belgium and will be further tested around the world this year, according to Geoffrey Hantson, the Belgium-based chief creative officer behind the “smellphone” technology. The app will subsequently launch in the AppStore and Google Play in the next phase, with a consumer version released afterwards.
Hantson told Huffington Post that it will be up to Nivea to sell those sensor-armed covers separately or as part of a body care package. Optimistic about a smarter future, he bets that the technology will actually be integrated into an actual phone in a couple of years.
Nosang Myung, a UC Riverside professor who invented an electronic nose, said the technology could possibly work through its “simple system” and by only detecting human sweat.
Watch the video below on this innovation that will tell men about their smell status, whether “It’s OK,” “It’s Time,” or “It’s Urgent.”
