Face Unlock is also available on the OnePlus 5T

Nov 24, 2017 09:16 GMT  ·  By

Facial recognition appears to be the next big thing in smartphones, and the majority of device makers appear to be adopting it these days, including tech giants like Samsung and Apple.

It’s no secret that Apple has made a big deal about Face ID, claiming that it’s nearly impossible to hack and citing a chance of 1:1,000,000 for someone else to unlock an iPhone X protected by this feature. This, Apple says, is a dramatic upgrade from 1:50,000 provided by the Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

OnePlus, on the other hand, thinks otherwise. The recently-debuted OnePlus 5T also comes with a facial recognition system called Face Unlock, and while it’s true that it’s not as complex as Apple’s Face ID, OnePlus admits that its facial recognition is just not there yet.

In a post explaining how Face Unlock works on its phones, OnePlus points out that this feature is only supposed to be used as an alternative method to get access to the device, but the fingerprint sensor, which is still available on the 5T, is the most secure means to protect the device.

“When we moved the fingerprint sensor to the back on the OnePlus 5T, we wanted to provide users a way to unlock the phone from the front of the device – with a focus on convenience and ease of access. Face Unlock is only designed as an additional option to open your device for the sake of convenience - Face Unlock is not enabled for Android Pay and other secure apps, such as banking apps,” OnePlus says.

Just stick with the fingerprint sensor

The company also made a reference to Apple’s Face ID system, explaining that “as we have seen from similar technologies, ‘100% secure’ simply doesn’t exist,” and this is the main reason a fingerprint sensor still exists on its phones.

But even though facial recognition system isn’t there just yet, this doesn’t mean OnePlus won’t continue working on making it more secure.

The company says at this point, Face Unlock uses the front camera to analyze more than 100 identifiers on users’ faces and has obviously been tweaked to work with glasses and in different conditions. The feature can’t be tricked with photos, selfies, or anything like that, the firm says, and it is automatically disabled after five unsuccessful attempts.

Future updates will make Face Unlock even more secure, it promises, but the bottom line is that you should stick with the fingerprint sensor for the time being.