“It’s a notable development in the wake of Apple’s new iPhone X, which abandons Apple’s pioneering fingerprint recognition system in favor of face scanning for device unlocking. “
OnePlus’s newest smartphone features a full-size display and built-in facial recognition.
The OnePlus 5T is a new iteration of the OnePlus 5 announced this past summer. But since that device’s release, OnePlus has evidently taken note of what is perhaps the biggest recent design trend in the smartphone industry, incorporating an 6″, 18:9 AMOLED display that takes up almost the full front face of the smartphone. To make room for it, OnePlus has moved the ceramic fingerprint sensor to the rear of the device.
Perhaps more importantly with respect to biometric capabilities, the device features a new facial recognition system for device unlock. It’s a notable development in the wake of Apple’s new iPhone X, which abandons Apple’s pioneering fingerprint recognition system in favor of face scanning for device unlocking. While the iPhone X isn’t the first smartphone to feature such a capability, it is perhaps the highest profile example, and its technology is sophisticated enough that Apple is hoping it will become the gold standard for biometric authentication for users. The development caused the mobile industry as a whole to pause and take a deep breath in anticipation of a consumer response that could prompt an industry shift toward this new modality.
For its part, OnePlus appears to have jumped in head-first, becoming one of the first smartphone makers to make facial recognition a central feature of a flagship device. Its Face Unlock system isn’t as sophisticated as Apple’s – OnePlus says it’s based on 100 identifiers in a given face, whereas Apple’s Face ID projects a 30,000-dot infrared grid to map its user’s face – but its very existence as a highlight feature of the OnePlus 5T may point to the next big trend in mobile biometrics.
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