OnePlus 5 To Gain Popular Face Unlock Feature From Flagship OnePlus 5T
Are you still unlocking your smartphone with a PIN or some other scheme that requires tapping or swiping the display? Maybe you've moved on to a fingerprint scanner. Either way, how primitive! Well, not really, but there does seem to be a hard push towards facial recognition. Apparently enough OnePlus 5 owners have been clamoring to unlock their devices by staring at it, just as their OnePlus 5T brethren can do, so the OnePlus team is going to make it happen.
The OnePlus 5 is not a very old device—it came just a few months before the OnePlus 5T made its resale debut. So the fact that the OnePlus 5T could be unlocked just by staring into its digital soul is understandably something that OnePlus 5 owners might be disappointed at not also being able to do. And soon they will be able to, according to OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, who made the announcement on Twitter.
"Due to popular demand, Face Unlock is coming for the OnePlus 5. Thanks for the feedback, and merry Christmas," Pei wrote, followed by a few Christmas-themed emojis (Santa Claus, a Christmas tree, and a wrapped present).
Pei did not say exactly when OnePlus 5 owners will be able to unlock their phones with their mugs, though we suspect it will be sooner than later (as in weeks, not months).
Facial recognition is one of the touted features of the iPhone X (called Face ID), though the implementation is not the same as found on the OnePlus 5T (and later the OnePlus 5). The iPhone X uses an infrared "TrueDepth" camera to map out a person's face and head in 3D, projecting tens of thousands of invisible dots to create a depth map. In comparison, the OnePlus 5T using an algorithm to compare images from its front-facing camera.
There have been some security issues with Face ID on the iPhone X, though generally speaking, the OnePlus 5T's approach is even less secure, the same of which will apply to the OnePlus 5 when the feature gets enabled. Nevertheless, it is a convenience that users seem to want, and OnePlus is going to deliver it to them.
