12:14pm UK, Friday September 24, 2004

A new generation of mobile phones will be able to tell you if your breath smells.  

Siemens, the German electronics group, has developed a small sensor which will inform you if it is exposed to gas such as bad or food-scented breath.

180 male office worker on mobile phone

Is that your breath I can smell?

"Our ceramic sensorised chips are smaller than one millimetre but they can pick up the smallest quantities of gas," Maximillian Fleischer told The Times. 

The technology responds to chemical reactions in the atmosphere and generates an electronic signal.  

One of the main targets in Germany will be beer drinkers.  

Many of the sensors are also strong enough to pick up other people's gaseous emissions or body odours.  

But despite the amusing use for this phone it has other qualities that could even save lives.  

Asthmatics could be alerted to an impending attack, and joggers and cyclists worried about ozone levels will be given a greenhouse-gas warning before their hearts start to race.  

  • A Japanese scientist has claimed to hvae developed a ringtone that gives women bigger breasts. Hideto Tomabechi says the noise "makes the brain and body move unconsciously".