Huawei announced the much-awaited Huawei Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro earlier this week. It seems like soon after its launch, the company may come under fire after AndroidPit’s Steffan Herget found that the phone was unable to differentiate between two alike faces. According to AndroidPit’s report, they were left shocked after the Mate 20 Pro managed to unlock itself when the phone was passed to his colleague.
The two people in question are both colleagues at Android Pit. What’s bugging with this issue is that the faces weren’t that alike either.
Now, Huawei’s 3D face unlock technology isn’t any gimmick. The Huawei Mate 20 utilizes a complex array of sensors to enhance the security of the phone when face unlock is activated. Huawei bet on its newly 3D Depth Sensing Camera, IR camera, dot projector and a number of other sensors to enable secure access to into the Huawei Mate 20 Pro seamlessly. While Face Unlock has received some major upgrades over the years thanks to advancement and the demand rate for such technology, Huawei would be in deep trouble if they are unable to get the issue fixed in time before shipping starts.
Since the folks over at AndroidPit have already got in touch with Huawei directly, we should see the issue addressed through an OTA update.
Given how much Huawei has invested into the technology and how well they presented it at the event, its such a shame to see that Huawei’s camera wasn’t able to distinguish the two apart despite the complex array of sensors and the large notch up front.
For now, the second alternative to this is the newly embedded fingerprint sensor in the Huawei Mate 20 Pro. With the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, Huawei has included an under-display fingerprint sensor for those who still want to stick to the more reliable method of unlocking their device. Since fingerprint sensors generally tend to be a much more reliable option than Face Unlock, we’d highly recommend users to add their fingerprint to their device as a failproof method to get into their devices.
