Contrary to popular belief, the iPhone X wasn’t the first device to come with face unlock. Android has had a face unlock feature for years; it’s just that it wasn’t even remotely good and failed under most conditions. One of the most pressing concerns with the feature was it’s inability to distinguish a photograph from a face, thereby putting the device at risk. Later, it was found out that a photograph could indeed be used to unlock a device. Shortly after, Google added a “liveness test” to face unlock, which required the user to blink. But, like its predecessor, it could be beaten by a video or a gif of the face blinking.
After the iPhone X, other OEMs followed suit to implement their own flavour of face unlock, one of which was OnePlus. The feature made its debut on the OnePlus 5T and ran into some trouble later as it was found to be infringing on some patents. It was then backported to older devices and is now found across all OnePlus devices. Credit where it’s due, the face unlock on the OnePlus 6 is snappy and better than most competition, but it isn’t without flaws, as demonstrated by the following Tweet:
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I printed my face to unlock my OnePlus 6 for the lulz… it worked ¯_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/rAVMq8JKBr
— rik (@rikvduijn) May 29, 2018
The primary reason that it happened could be because the OnePlus 6’s front-facing camera cannot distinguish between a 2D and 3D surface, owing to a lack of an IR projector like the one that comes with the iPhone X. Samsung took an alternate route by employing retinal scan technology which is marginally more secure, but not impenetrable.
The news a bit puzzling, considering that the OnePlus 5T could not be tricked by a photograph, so it makes one wonder what went wrong with the OnePlus 6. OnePlus does show a disclaimer stating that face unlock less secure compared to other options and aggressively pushes it at the same time. OnePlus hasn’t commented on the matter yet, and we’ll keep you updated when they do.
Source: Android Police
