OnePlus 5 to get facial recognition capabilities

Although security researchers managed to prove more than just once that fingerprint-based access is safer than facial recognition, this feature continues to show up in the feature list of many high-end handsets these days. Released last week, the OnePlus 5T arrived with the Face Unlock feature ready for use from the first moment, but it looks like a software update for its predecessor is ready to bring facial recognition to the OnePlus 5 as well.

As revealed by a closer look at the options available in the second leaked build of OxygenOS 5.0 for the OnePlus 5 that surfaced at the end of last week on the popular XDA Developers forum, this handset should receive the Face Unlock feature sooner or later. The feature might spend some extra-time being tested since OnePlus recently claimed that the OnePlus 5 will not get facial recognition at all.

OnePlus' Face Unlock feature has been compared to the similar tool (known as Trusted Face) that Google added to Smart Lock, but it is generally considered to be a superior solution. The reason is that Face Unlock does not require to manually dismiss the lock screen, while Trusted Face does. Even more, many of the reviews of the OnePlus 5T published so far concluded that Face Unlock is quite accurate and is very hard to fool it using photos.

The OnePlus 5 flagship should get the first official beta of the Android Oreo-based OxygenOS firmware this week, so we should find out more about the introduction of the Face Unlock feature once that happens.