OnePlus to soon release Face Unlock open beta for OnePlus 5

Earlier this week, OnePlus announced that the 'Face Unlock' feature will make its way to OnePlus 5 with Android 8.0 Oreo update. As some of you may know, this particular feature was first introduced on OnePlus 5T.

Within hours of making the announcement OnePlus 5 started receiving the Android 8.0 Oreo update along with OxygenOS 5.0. However, the official changelog for the update didn't mention anything about the Face Unlock feature. Well, OnePlus has just confirmed that it will soon release an open beta build of Face Unlock for OnePlus 5 users. The company wants to test the feature first before releasing the final version.

This will allow the Chinese manufacturer to kill any bugs and roll out a stable edition of Face Unlock to OnePlus 5 users. There is a chance that OnePlus may make it available on older models. If you recall, the company's co-founder Carl Pei had recently carried out a poll recently on Twitter to ask OnePlus 3 and 3T users whether they would want to use Face Unlock feature on their phones.

OnePlus's Face Unlock feature is quite fast, and it is even faster than the Face ID by Apple. However, it is not as secure as the Face ID so it cannot be used for authenticating a mobile payment. Apple's facial recognition technology is based on complex 3D sensors.

OnePlus's Face Unlock, on the other hand, identifies the user's face by recognizing certain features of the face such as the space between the eyes or the gap between nose and lip.

On the upside, the Face Unlock technology is advanced enough to identify a face in low light conditions and even when the user is wearing glasses or specs. It can also understand the difference between a real face and a photo.

If Face Unlock is cannot identify a face after five attempts, the face recognition feature will get disabled. Then the user will have to unlock the phone using the fingerprint scanner or by entering the PIN code or patterns.