Cameraphone turns whole world into a shop

The NEC N902iS uses image recognition to identify products and locate them in an online store

A new phone could enable users to buy any product they can see, even if it isn't in a shop. The NEC N902iS uses image recognition to identify products and locate them in an online store. 

The combination of services offered by the phone could make it possible to instantly buy a watch in the window of a store that is closed, for example, or a piece of clothing worn by a model in an advert.

Companies such as Amazon and Tower Records will make their products available through the service.

The phone, which will be sold by network operator NTT DoCoMo in Japan, also incorporates the company's DCMX mobile credit card technology which enables the phone to act like a credit card. 

NTT did not provide information on pricing for the phone, which will go on sale in Japan this month.

The 114g handset is 23mm thick. It incorporates a 240 x 345 pixel screen, a 2-megapixel main camera, and a VGA-resolution secondary camera. NTT DoCoMo estimates the talk time at between three and four hours, and standby time at up to 540 hours.

The phone relies on software from US-based Evolution Robotics to identify products in photos taken with the built-in camera. 

The ViPR software extracts key features of objects in the scene, and sends them to a central database which locates the product with the closest match.

"A ViPR-enabled device can automatically detect and recognise visual patterns using low-end imagers like the ones found in the vast majority of cameraphones, " said Evolution Robotics in a statement.

"The algorithms that make up the technology are particularly robust and provide an unprecedented level of reliability even with heavy distortions that can be introduced by changes in viewpoint, a wide range of lighting conditions, and pattern occlusions."

Mobot Inc has been carrying out a live trial of a cameraphone image identification system in the US for several months using Evolution Robotics' technology. 

In addition, Microsoft has conducted research into a system dubbed Photo2Search that matches phone camera images with information from an online database. 

This would allow a user to take a picture of a restaurant, for example, and immediately be presented with an online review of the establishment.

Microsoft has not said whether this research will be turned into a commercial service.