The latest Japanese phones from NTT DoCoMo offer a novel feature that could be life-saving. Called Area Mail, the new feature provides quick emergency reports delivered to mobile phones in a specific area, with dedicated ringtones and messages used to alert the user to an impending emergency.

Given that Japan is one of the most seismically-active regions on Earth, an earthquake warning system is the obvious application of Area Mail, which can send its alerts out to mobile phones within an area identified as most at risk. This has the benefit of alerting only those who need to be alerted, and not unnecessarily panicking those who are outside the danger zone.

NTT DoCoMo also announced a few other interesting pieces of mobile phone technology...

The new NTT DoCoMo phones also offer Shabette Hon-yaku, a Japanese-English (and vice versa) voice translation service. Simply speak into the phone in Japanese, and the phone will speak back in English - or vice versa, if preferred.

The interesting thing about this service is that the translation occurs on the server, not the mobile phone, meaning that the service is free to improve in time without the need to upgrade the handsets.

Intriguingly, the voice input itself isn't sent to the server, but rather "characteristics" of the voice, which are then translated. The same functionality can be used to control other applications, such as games.

[Source: Techn-On]