Hold On, My Other Line is Stinking.

Why just phone your sweetie from the a long day at work when you can include the conciliatory fragrance of her favorite roses or chocolates? Or just text message your snowbound relations from your Florida vacation bungalow when you can toss in the taunting scent of Coppertone and margaritas? Smellular Phone research is moving rapidly along, courtesy of such companies as Japan’s NTT Communications which last month conducted a ten-day trial of its Fragrance Communication Mobile Service. While not permitting scent retrieval from a cell phone, the technology allows users to mix and send aromatic recipes from their cell phones to an in-home unit which holds 16 cartridges of base fragrances that are mixed to produce custom scents in a way similar to a printer mixing inks to produce various colors.

April also saw the partnering of German firms Institute of Sensory Analysis and Marketing Consultancy and Convisual to patent their “scented text messages” via a smart card-sized chip. While this system does permit phone-to-phone scent communication, the range is limited to about 100 different prefabricated scents.

Perhaps most intriguing is Nokia’s Scentsory concept phone, which threatens to make those calls from a smoke-filled bar to explain a late night at the office a thing of the past. Using a sort of electronic nose that works with highly sophisticated sensors, the ingenious device detects and electronically recreates the distinct genetic patterns of any given odor, allowing it to emit smells right from the caller’s actual environment.

And already on the market (Japan’s market only, at present) is NTT DoCoMo and Sony Ericsson’s SO703i which, while not capable of transmitting your aromatic greetings to others in any capacity, does allow a choice of 9 scented sheets to sweeten your own incoming calls.