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Security concerns have led Smartphone developers to offer users features such as password-protecting devices and controlling who's allowed to identify a phone's location (with applications such as Loopt, for example). A newer technology in the mobile market is biometric fingerprint scanning. Promoters say it will make using a smartphone for personal banking, accessing corporate networks and conducting other private transactions more secure.

ClassifEye, an Israeli company, offers one option, which relies on a smartphone's camera rather than a separate biometric read, such as what we've seen before from Authentec, for example.

The Toshiba Portege G910 (see image) is one of several smartphones and cell phones already offering biometric security. In that device's case it's Atrua's ATW310 fingerprint touch control solution doing the work. With the G910, it takes the owner's fingerprint to unlock the device.

Chinese phone vendor Tranzda is another company that features the technology on some of its phones. Whereas the G910 is a Windows Mobile model, Tranzda's biometric models run on Linux.

While biometric security is still far from ubiquitous, especially here in the U..S., where it can only be found on a few laptops, the technology is definately worth keeping an eye out for the next time you upgrade you smartphone. Unlike passwords and PINs, fingerprints don't need to be remembered.