Motorola's Digital Tattoo Easily Unlocks Your Cell Phone

What’s the Latest?

Earlier this week, Motorola introduced a rather unorthodox new way for Moto X owners to unlock their smartphone. All you need is a digital tattoo.

Motorola’s official hype video:

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First observation: you’ve got to love how the makers of this video invoke the Infomercial Fail trope to sell unlocking your phone as one of the major struggles of our time (it pops up in another ad as well).

Joking aside though, Motorola estimates that smartphone users spend about 90 seconds a day swiping or inputting a password to gain access to their device. Draw that out over weeks, months, or years and you can see why Motorola made their digital tattoos a priority.

What’s the Big Idea?

If you watched the video you’ll recognize Motorola’s earlier easy-access technology, Skip. A device that resembles a chip clip, the $10 Skip also offered easy proximity unlocking. While a digital tattoo may be something new and futuristic, it’s probably not nearly as pragmatic as Skip due to the former’s temporary nature (it wears away after five days). That they’ll be sold ten to a pack for $10 means they may also be prohibitively expensive when compared to their chip clip predecessors.

The digital tattoos are sold online through VivaLnk, who hopes to spread the technology to other devices. Gizmodo published a feature on the future of tech tattoos earlier this year. Regardless of whether the Motorola/VivaLnk digital tattoos are a success, we can expect to see similar innovations pop up (or inked on) in the near future.