Ryan Whitwam
2023-10-05 13:30:00
www.extremetech.com
Google’s new flagship Pixel phones still have an optical fingerprint sensor under the display, but that’s not the only secure biometric option. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are the first Google phones in four years to have secure face unlock, but they don’t have dedicated hardware like the floppy Pixel 4 or Apple’s iPhones. It’s all software, thanks to Google’s latest machine learning algorithms.
Face unlock has existed on Android for over a decade, but almost every phone supporting it relied on the front-facing camera. These sensors are primarily for selfies, so they produce a regular 2D image. That makes it much easier to fool with a picture or mask. Therefore, Google doesn’t consider face unlock secure enough to authorize sensitive features like Google Pay, password autofill, and other features that work with fingerprints.
Google is being coy about the specifics, reports 9to5Google, but its latest smartphones have apparently cracked the face unlock code. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro have a 10.5MP front-facing camera—the addition of autofocus is the only new feature this year, but other phones have that. Google only says that its machine learning tech has allowed the Pixels to authenticate users with the camera securely. The setup page on the phone says that the process creates a custom model of your face and that data is not stored.
The new Pixels will proactively offer to activate face unlock during the initial setup, but you can also turn it on by visiting the security settings later. Once that’s done, your phone can use face unlock for secure features that usually require tapping the fingerprint sensor. Google says the new face unlock counts as a Class 3 biometric ID with a false acceptance rate of no more than one in 50,000.
Credit: Ryan Whitwam
We’ve tested this feature on the Pixel 8, and it’s very quick. Apple’s face unlock is similarly snappy, but Google does have one notable advantage. The selfie camera has an ultrawide lens, so it can see you and unlock even if the phone isn’t pointed directly at you. The iPhone’s Face ID relies on an IR dot projector, flood illuminator, and cameras with a narrower field of view. So, you might have to reposition the device for face unlock to work.
The phones have not yet gone out to the general public, so it’s hard to say how secure this feature is. Undoubtedly, people will try to trick it, and some might succeed. That could prompt Google to issue a patch, similar to how Samsung had to refresh its fingerprint algorithms after they learned the pattern of screen protectors instead of fingerprints.