“Megvii added that its technology can perform facial recognition in 0.1 seconds and digital face reconstruction in 0.3 seconds, and that it offers a 0.0001 percent false recognition rate, pointing to a high level of accuracy.”

A new OPPO smartphone is bringing 3D facial recognition to Android, with a big boost from facial modelling specialist Megvii.

The device’s face scanning capability is based on what Megvii calls “3D structured light technology.” In a statement announcing the collaboration Megvii compared its technology to that underlying Apple’s Face ID system, which projects an infrared grid onto a user’s face in order to build a 3D model that can be used for biometric authentication and animated emojis. But the company went further, too, asserting that OPPO’s new device, the OPPO Find X, “essentially outperforms all currently marketed models” in terms of facial recognition, thanks to Megvii’s structured light technology.

Megvii added that its technology can perform facial recognition in 0.1 seconds and digital face reconstruction in 0.3 seconds, and that it offers a 0.0001 percent false recognition rate, pointing to a high level of accuracy.

The announcement of the OPPO Find X integration arrives alongside news from last week’s Mobile World Congress that Megvii is also working with another smartphone maker, Vivo, on mobile face scanning technology. In Megvii’s OPPO announcement, the company’s SVP of cloud computing, Wu Wenhao, suggested that the mobile sector is now the key focus area for applications of the company’s face scanning technology, asserting that “the mobile phone market is meant to be the main theater of war.”