Are you in the mood for a Microsoft smartphone?

Dubbed "MoodScope", Microsoft is trialling a first-of-its-kind software which determines a user's mood based on how they use a smartphone.

In what is being labelled as a chance to catch up to iOS and Android, the company is building a mood sensor from smartphone usage patterns.

"We report a first-of-its-kind smartphone software system, MoodScope, which infers the mood of its user based on how the smartphone is used," Microsoft's research paper says.

"Compared to smartphone sensors that measure acceleration, light, and other physical properties, MoodScope is a “sensor” that measures the mental state of the user and provides mood as an important input to context-aware computing.

"We run a formative statistical mood study with smartphone-logged data collected from 32 participants over two months."

Through the study, the researchers have found that by analysing communication history and application usage patterns, they can statistically infer a user’s daily mood average with an initial accuracy of 66%, which gradually improves to an accuracy of 93% after a two-month personalised training period.

"Motivated by these results, we build a service, MoodScope, which analyses usage history to act as a sensor of the user’s mood," the report says.

"We provide a MoodScope API for developers to use our system to create mood-enabled applications.

"We further create and deploy a mood-sharing social application."

How are you feeling?

Tech site Mashable says the technology "would allow users to automatically share those moods with friends in real time on networks such as Facebook.

"[P]rivacy concerns aside, these moods would enhance social networks by allowing users to share mood states automatically.

"Users would be able to know better how and when to communicate with others."

Does MoodScope sound good to you? Can it work? Tell us your thoughts below