Location tags for mobile phone

For a long time mobile phones have "profiles" for different environment situations. These "profiles" include ring type and volume, screen brightness and similar tunings for comfortable use in the specific situation. But you have to switch profiles manually - that makes them being a feature of little use. So there should be a way for the phone to guess the environment. Or the environment should tell it.

The most obvious way is to install small beacons that transmit fixed messages such as "here is an office room". These beacons or "location tags" have to be cheap, reliable and working for a long time without any maintenance. The simplest method to transmit the tag message seems to be Bluetooth. The transmission power should be low to to limit the tagging zone size and to save energy. In this case any modern mobile phone can be used - just install the appropriate software. A phone receives a tag message about the location and acts according to the phone configuration for the location. It may obey the tag unconditionally or prompt the phone owner.

Several tag types proposed from the scratch:

Tag type	Meaning	Location	Working distance	Priority	Shape	Power source
"with me", "street"	the phone is in a pocket or clipped to the belt	worn	low	lowest	belt clip, key chain pendant, button	electrodynamic (from walk shake), electrothermal (from body warmth), button cell
"bag"	the phone is in the bag (especially useful for women)	in/on the bag	lowest	higher than "with me"	detachable pendant, button, sticker	electrodynamic (from walk shake), solar cell (if the tag is located outside the bag), button cell
"room"	living room, office, classroom, theater, etc	fixed on a wall or a furniture in the room	large (use several tags to cover the whole compartment)	high	sticker, pass-through plug to a wall socket	solar cell (uses the room illumination), a wall electric socket (power mains, computer network, phone - the tag is transparent for the transmission, it just seal some energy)

Tag meaning can be programmed. So as the tag is just a tag, and the phone is told to recognize it in a specific way.

Tags can be sold by retail stores in sets of different tag types. These end-user tags have to be linked with the phone by the owner. For other phones they are meaningless. There are also possible commonly recognized tags: theatre/church, cafe, classroom, gym, etc. These tags could be silently scattered in appropriate sites by a vendor or an operator. Such a guerrilla marketing.

Really these tags could be useful for any wearable gadget that behaves location-specific.