News update..

New cell phone that knows its owner
Posted on : Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:12:00 GMT | Author : Martin Booth
News Category : Technology


DoCoMo, one of Japan's top mobile companies, has released its new range of models with innovative security features which takes mobile security to a new level. This phone can detect when its owner moves away, provides a facial recognition locking system and has an inbuilt GPS system that can be used to trace the phone, if lost.

This amazing new security system is just a small black card which can be carried in the owner's bag or pocket. If the owner moves away from the range of detection of the phone it automatically locks so that nobody else could use it.

The system can be programmed to lock when the owner (security card) is 26 feet, 66 feet or 130 feet away. If the security card gets lost the owner could type in a password to unlock the phone but a new security card is needed to activate the system again.


A potential loophole here is that fraudsters could access the phone if the card is within the detectable range. To prevent this from happening, the facial recognition system can be used. The owner takes a minimum of 3 self-photos, up to 10 can be taken. These have to be with and without glasses, with and without makeup, indoors and outdoors, that is to give the phone a wide variety of choices.

Now when the facial identification system is activated the phone compares the image coming up in front of it with the stored image by checking the distance between the eyes. If it finds a match between the two images it unlocks. If someone tries to fool the phone by showing it a snap of the owner it uses another in built feature to check if the eyes are blinking. In addition to this identical twins can set up a four letter password as the next step of identification to prevent unauthorized access by the other.

The other innovative feature of these P903i phone is the inbuilt GPS system. So if the phone does get lost the phone number could be keyed into a site along with some other details and it would track the phone down to its location within accuracy of several hundred feet. These security features are important to modern day Japanese phones as they double up as a credit or a pre-paid cash card.

This system was designed by a female designer who has put in a lot of features which are women centric. The most interesting one being the one that the phone could be programmed to alert a woman of the time she is most fertile in her monthly menstrual cycle. This has been in answer to Japan's declining fertility rate. The other features are its pastel, curvy shape; its inbuilt recipe database and a button that activates a tone that helps a lady ignore undesired attention by pretending to take a call.