Mobile phone security has taken a page from a James Bond script. A Japanese software company has recently developed a phone containing an anti-theft camera that recognises the face of its owner.

Omron Corportation’s system enables phone owners to save a photograph of themselves on their handset. To activate the phone, owners must take a new photograph of themselves that matches the original, preventing the phone from being used by a thief.

The Metropolitan Police state that half of all street robberies contain the theft of a mobile phone. Given current concerns over identity theft, people who use mobiles for secure transactions could find Omron’s technology useful.

“Mobile devices are carrying increasingly personal information, including address books, schedules and payment information,” said Masato Kawade, senior manager of Omron’s sensing technology laboratory in Kyoto, in Tuesday’s Guardian. “This technology has been designed to protect this information even when the phone is lost or stolen.”

The process works by measuring the distances between key points on the face, such as the eyes, nose, and mouth. The software takes one second to work and only uses 370 Kb of a mobile’s memory. Omron says that in tests the security device worked 99% of the time. However, some experts doubt that mobiles will be able to handle such a complex system.

“If the face is turned through a few degrees compared with their stored face, then the measurements will change,” Alan Robinson, a research scientist at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, told the New Scientist. “Although it is possible to deal with this pose problem, the better solution is to use 3D methods, which will record the surface of the face irrespective of pose.”