Tech takes control: Breathalyser phone set for launch28 July 2006
We've all done it. Gone out for a 'couple' of drinks and woken up ten hours later with a cracking headache and the vague déjà vu-esque feeling that we did something embarrassing while under the influence. And as anyone who has been in this hellish morning after the night before situation knows, there are varying degrees of embarrassment.
Calling people who probably don't want to speak to us sober, let alone when we're legless, is a by-product problem of the emergence of the digital age (and the British tendency to binge-drink). But for booze-loving Brits who can't let go of the past, help is finally at hand.
The first ever 'breathalyser phone' is about to be launched in the UK by LG Electronics, and it looks set to put an end to inadvisable calls and the altogether more serious alcohol-fuelled misdemeanour of drink-driving.
The LP 4100 comes equipped with all the usual bells and whistles that we have come to expect in our mobiles, including camera and video functions and an OLED screen, but it is the breathalyser feature that is likely to drive its sales and justify its price-tag. If blowing into the phone reveals the user to be over the legal limit for driving the display shows an animated car serving and crashing. And the handset can be programmed so that certain numbers are automatically blocked if the sensor reads a high alcohol level.
Sounds like the ideal life-saver and dignity-preserver rolled into one, but will it take off? The company has already launched the phone in Korea and has apparently shifted 200,000 units in just four months. But it will be interesting to see if it becomes a must-have, or another great-in-theory, average-in-reality invention.
One example of this is technology such as the in-car GPS navigation device, which even the most techno-phobe of individuals would have to admit is a good idea. Talk to anyone who has one and does not live and drive on main roads alone, however, and it's likely you'll discover that potential flaws don't just end at the irritating voice commands, but that driving miles off course or in the wrong direction altogether can still happen.
But for everyone who finds that their lives aren't safer, more dignified or route-planningly perfect through using these kinds of gadgets, there are inevitably plenty of people who simply can't live without them. And no doubt the singletons of the UK not blessed with phone-self-control will find this latest gadget a welcome companion for a night on the sauce.
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