Posted Oct 28, 2006 at 06:50AM by Mabie A. Listed in: Cellular Previews, Cellular Phones Tags: Japan, GPS, Cellular Phones, P903i
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P903iCellular phones have inevitably become a part of everyone's lifestyle. In fact, it's become so pervasive in our daily affairs that imagining a day without it almost comes next to impossible. That's why it's really stressful if you lose it. A lot of security measures have been implemented in order to somehow ensure the safety of your mobile phones. But this particular mobile phone's security feature from Japan just blew us away.

Here's what it can do: it can recognize its owner, automatically lock if the person gets too far away from it, and it can be tracked down via a satellite navigation if it gets lost. Unbelievable? Believe it.

This mobile phone is NTT DoCoMo's P903i. The unit comes with a small black card, practically the size of a movie ticket, which happens to be a wireless security key. How does this work exactly? If the card is placed in the owner's pocket or bag, the phone can identify if it's already too far away from it. And when it does, the phone automatically locks to prevent anyone else from making a phone call. The phone lock can be set at 26 feet, 66 feet, or 130 feet away. Now, if ever the owner loses the card, there's no need to worry because they could still use their phone by simply punching in a password. However, they would have to get a new security card to set the lock again.

Assuming that the phone was successfully taken from the owner, is there a way to protect the information in the phone? Well, that appears to be one of the downside of the system. If and when the thief is just within the set parameters of the security card, then there is no stopping him from snooping into the contents of the phone. However, the owner can activate a facial identification feature.

A what?!

The facial identification feature specifically is for your mobile phone to, well, recognize you. Just take a picture of yourself with the phone's camera (up to ten shots, if you're vain enough, and with different poses, at that!) for stored data. Before you access the phone, you have to take another shot of yourself. Basically, the phone would analyze your features such as distance between the eyes and unlocks if the image matches the stored data. Apart from this, there's also a four-letter password, which can be added to the process, to make sure that you're protected even against your own identical twin. Okay...

When the phone does get lost, it's traceable with the installed GPS. All you have to do is get online and enter the phone number into a Web site, and voila! You'd know the rough location of your unit.

Well, that's some super phone right there. However, there's still no word on the pricing for the P903i, although it's been said to be ready for release in a couple of months.


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   by digipure (Unregistered) - 2006-10-30
 » P903i will be in the shops next wednesday

According to Ketai Watch, this phone will be out next wednesday, and probably will be under 40.000 yens (as all the cell phones in Japan)