Do you keep a lot of personal information on your phone? Lots of people do, so it’s a relief to know manufacturers are upgrading security measures.. Facial recognition technology has seen some recent advances, so we’ve had a look at what’s going on and what different manufacturers are doing to make things more secure.
How does it work?
When you scan your face, the recognition technology uses an algorithm to turn what it’s seeing into data. That data is then collected and stored, to create a personalised profile for you. Manufacturers are using different approaches to achieve this, finding clever ways to keep devices secure.
How does Apple’s facial recognition work?
Newer Apple models, like iPhone Xr, use a ‘TrueDepth’ camera system which uses infrared light to scan your face. It beams 30,000 invisible dots onto your face to create a ‘depth map’, then saves this map to an encrypted file in your device. It will never be backed up to iCloud, so it’s kept safe.
You don’t need to worry about it being too dark to work either. The ‘Flood illuminator’ can pick your face up even when you haven’t yet turned the light on in the morning, thanks to infrared light. It’s a big improvement to the way Apple’s older Face ID works.
What does Samsung do differently?
Samsung has also used infrared technology in their facial recognition software, but it focuses more heavily on your eyes than the whole face. That’s because your iris has about 5 times more unique features than your finger or thumb print, so it’s more secure and personalised to you.
It still scans your whole face and head and records things like the distances between your features and other things unique to you. Collecting more information about you makes the device more secure, and you know it won’t unlock for anyone but you.
You’ll find Samsung’s facial recognition software on phones like the Galaxy S9.
What about other Android phones?
Android’s Face Unlock is relatively straightforward. It detects the appearance of your face using the front camera, then saves the scan to a file in your phone. When you want to unlock your phone, it uses the front camera to take a new scan, then compares it to the original.
This can be problematic if you’re wearing sunglasses, or if your appearance changes quite a lot from day to night. There’s always the passcode or pattern as backup options though if you want to stick to more familiar territory.
Got a question about using facial recognition technology? Ask in the comments and the ID Community will have a go at figuring it out for you.
