Chris Griffith reviews the Beacon, a small Bluetooth device available through i07 that when placed in a shop broadcasts information to your smart phone. Estimote shows one way retailers can use the new iBeacon devices to get customers through their door. Estimote is one of several companies producing Beacons, small and cheap transmitters that use bluetooth to communicate with users' smartphones. TAKE out your smartphone and prepare for a hi-tech shopping ride. Small transmitting devices known as beacons dotted around shops are about to guide you on your way. They're set to revolutionise retail and challenge the need to pay at a centralised cashier when you buy. Costing about $30, beacons are small transmitters that use a wireless protocol called Bluetooth low energy. They communicate with smartphones within a short range, from a few centimetres away to 45m, depending on the manufacturer. BLE delivers incredible battery life, with a beacon operating from six months to two years on a single battery. When you pass close to a store in a shopping centre, a beacon will detect your phone's presence and automatically alert you to signature items for sale and specials, or offer other information to lure you inside. And once you're inside looking around, other beacons will tempt you with discounts on the shoes you happen to be looking at and, should you wish to buy, let you pay for them on the spot using an e-commerce payment app such as PayPal, which already is gearing to use beacons. You don't even need to load the app to get screens of information. It's understood your phone just needs Bluetooth to be switched on, the latest version of the relevant beacon or payment app installed, and for you to grant that app permission to be accessed by a beacon - just as you might grant an app access to your location. The beauty about beacons is you don't need WiFi, GPS or your phone's mobile connection working. A beacon knows precisely where you are when you enter inside its electronic fence, and it can offer information about goods in front of your eyes. Given their location abilities, beacons also have a big future in museums and art galleries, giving you precise information about items as you wander past, at trade shows and in exhibition halls, or giving timetable information on the railway platform you are standing on - automatically. Home automation is another likely use of beacon technology. Phones that come within range of beacons could trigger doors to open and lights to switch on. Beacons look like being a commercial reality with Apple snubbing the alternative Near Field Communication protocol in favour of what seems a beacons approach to shopping and mapping. The new iOS 7 operating system that Apple released last week for iPhones and iPads includes a feature called iBeacon. BLE, the other necessary element, is available from the iPhone 4S onwards. Apple so far has given little away regarding its iBeacon strategy, except to suggest that an iBeacon is an Apple device that talks to or acts as a beacon. "iBeacons provide a way to create and monitor beacons that advertise certain identifying information using Bluetooth low-energy wireless technology," Apple says in an explanation. Apple places emphasis on beacon technology as part of a device's location services and there's no doubt that beacons can offer the mapping accuracy indoors that users enjoy outdoors with satellite-enabled GPS. One prospective source of beacons - bluetoothbeacons.com, sees a strong integration with Apple's Passbook app, such as a beacon sending discount coupons to a phone's wallet on items that interest the user. Apple so far has rejected any use of its Passbook digital wallet for retail payments using credit cards. Irrespective of how Apple develops its digital wallet, the iPhone itself will be a key user of beacon services, with Google too announcing this month that it will bring its Wallet to the iPhone. Beacons and BLE are far from just an Apple apparition. Google has been supporting BLE since Android 4.3 and Nokia is in the process of bringing it to Lumia Windows 8 smartphones. In fact Nokia was the first to promote the Bluetooth low energy standard, back in 2006. Users of most modern smartphones and operating systems will enjoy the beacon phenomenon. The advent of beacons and its embracing by Apple does suggest the rival NFC technology, which lets a user make a payment by waving a phone over a receptor, may be stalling. NFC certainly has not taken off in retail despite its massive promotion over the past three years. But in the Android world NFC is a popular way of making payments by tapping phones together, or pairing a phone with, say, a speaker or a TV, by tapping the phone against it. PayPal Australia director of retail and strategy Andrew Rechtman said the e-commerce company was working with suppliers to develop its beacons, which would integrate with point-of-sale systems. Trials are under way over the next three months with POS provider OrderMate on board. Paesano restaurant in Melbourne was the first go-live location, with another restaurant in Melbourne and Sydney participating now, he said. Mr Rechtman said PayPal's beacon systems would roll out generally in the first or second quarter of next year. Start-ups and developers are in on the action. The start-up estimote.com is taking pre-orders for beacons - $US99 ($105) for a pack of three. Estimote.com also plans to offer retailers business analytics about what interests a customer in a shop. Readers can try a simulation of beacon technology by downloading the Estimote Virtual Beacon app from the Apple App Store on to two devices.