Ever spend a lazy day at the beach, letting the hours drift by under a stratosphere heavily depleted of ozone, only to come home and discover that your skin's turned redder than the Cherry Chocolate in your pocket? Philips has the solution to the pollution in a patent filing recently made public -- but we've gotta warn you, it doesn't look cheap. First, we've gotta build a nationwide network of UV sensors that are capable of transmitting their status to nearby cell towers. Then, we need said towers to know how to process the data and alert nearby phones of the badness of the sun's rays based on the user's current location. For the coup de grâce, Philips also throws in the ability to notify the user of a recommended SPF number, but right now we're more concerned about the sheer mass of infrastructure required to get the basic setup up and running. Don't get us wrong, it'd be nice to avoid using our common sense to avoid sunburn, but this is one system we don't see coming to fruition.

[Via New Scientist Tech]