A magnetic vibrating tattoo has to be one of the strangest patent applications in quite a while, but Finnish phone giant Nokia has filed a US patent for just that, reports the Wall Street Journal.
According to Nokia's patent filing, Nokia is proposing “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.”
Or to put it another way, a vibrating tattoo.
Nokia’s logic is that in much the same way that you can have different ring tones for different callers, so too a future phone could emit a different magnetic field depending who is calling, or if your battery is running low, or you receive an SMS, for example.
The Finnish company says it could use “ink enriched by ferromagnetic or paramagnetic compounds” which could be applied to badges as well as tattoos.
What next? Nokia moves to all-Windows smartphones?