Face Recognition Comes to Cameraphones

An anonymous reader writes "If you have a camera phone, you may soon have to take a picture of yourself before making a call or accessing data stored on the device. A Japanese company has developed face recognition software for camera phones that it says can authenticate users within one second of clicking the shutter. Omron (Japanese) will demonstrate its Okao Vision Face Recognition Sensor at tomorrow's Security Show Japan in Tokyo."

Comments

Yeah! More Crap 4 My Phone!

[geomon]

I equivocate over the added features for cell phones. This is one that I can't see having too much impact here in the US. Face recognition for your phone? What for? To use my phone?

What if I lose or gain a few pounds? What if I grow or cut my beard? What if I get a new girlfriend and she changes my "look" with a new 'dew?

It is hard enough to get customer service for my phone as it is. I don't need to be locked out of my phone because I changed my diet.

Begins with 'G' ends in about 6 months

[t_allardyce]

This is such a pathetic gimmick, in 6 months no one will care about about it or be using it - how many people here even use voice dial? It doesn't even have a use to it, there is simply no problem with entering a pin number and facial recognition is simply not that good, even in good fixed lighting conditions with a good camera and lots of computing power its bad enough to be annoying, for security i give this about 3/10 - its better than setting your pin number to all zeros, usefulness is around 4/10 - maybe you could find some kind of novelty application for it? why wait 1 second when your pin number is checked instantly? why bother taking a picture when you can often tap yor keypad without even looking, why waste R&D on this when people really just want flat-rate fast net-access on their phones, to be honest.

Re:Begins with 'G' ends in about 6 months

[QMO]

I think that you're not understanding the market.
The cell phone market isn't driven by utility. It's driven by gimmicks. There is no other way to explain people buying $20 (or more) worth of ring tones.

The majority pay more for the new gimmick on the phone than they do for more bandwidth. The gimmicks are cheaper to develop. They are cheaper to introduce. And they are easily replaceable by the next gimmick, since they have no actual usefulness that needs to be maintained.

What?

[KillerDeathRobot]

Why do phones suddenly need biometric security devices?? As far as I'm aware, security isn't that big of a problem concerning cell phones. None or close to none of the current generation (or previous) of phones has much of any security like that, nor do many pda's I've seen.

Most people don't keep a lot of really sensitive data on their phones, and phones aren't really remotely hackable like normal computers. Why all of a sudden do we need face recognition on them??