Here’s a lame idea pretending to be a ‘cool’ iPhone smoke signals German invention which will let you send secret messages to your friends. You know, because SMS and messenger apps are so old fashioned. Dennis Be Bel’s S.M.S. (short for Smoke Messaging Service) is basically an iPhone case which contains an apparatus for vaporizing lamp oil stored in it.
When a button on the cover is pushed, the oil gets heated and a puff of smoke escapes it. Normally, we’d shout ‘Fire!’ and whack the iPhone out of the owner’s hands before proceeding to stamp out the device’s flame. In case you’re not usually surrounded by quick-thinking folks like us, you can use the apparatus to send a smoke signal to a friend.
Wondering how your pal who may be miles away is supposed to see the puff? It’s not that simple, you need to have a group of people who are usually within your vicinity to also use the stupid iPhone case. So they see your signal and pass it on to the next person and that individual communicates the message to the next member of your chain of messengers.
And the message has to be simple. “For example, three puffs is ‘hello,’ 5 puffs is ‘hello, I’m coming home later,'” explains Bel to Motherboard. Windy day? No chance of playing with your lamp oil vaporizer button unless you’re indoors. Or you could ditch the equipment and agree on ‘One thumbs up is Hello,’ ‘A curled index finger is Run,’ and so on.
But don’t take Bel’s iPhone smoke signals project too seriously. It’s more of ‘a reaction against this constrained innovation’ than anything else. It’s certainly not a commercially viable concept at least.