OnePlus has announced that its facial recognition and ipad air screen replacement unlocking feature will be making it to the OnePlus 5 and - perhaps later - to the OnePlus 3 and 3T as well.
Apart from big 18:9 ratio 6-inch screen, the biggest new feature added to the OnePlus 5T was Face Unlock. Using the front facing camera, the phone measures 100+ data points of a person's face to recognise them and unlock the phone.
In a post published in the OnePlus forums for its community, Carl Pei - the company's co-founder - stated that the feature has been among the most requested by existing OnePlus users.
Starting with an upcoming version of the Oreo Open Beta software, OnePlus 5 users will be the first with older devices to make use of the feature.
Once the beta testing is done and OnePlus is happy with the performance, they'll roll it out in an official software update worldwide. There was even suggestion that the company could roll it out to the 2016 OnePlus flagships; OnePlus 3 and 3T.
Towards the end of his announcement, Pei asked OnePlus 3 and 3T users if they would also like to see the feature added to their devices. Given that it uses the front facing camera only, and doesn't require additional hardware like depth or IR sensors, it would be a matter of just including it in a software update.
In our testing, Face Unlock has been really quick and reliable, although it isn't as secure as using a fingerprint scan. The biggest reason for this is that it uses the camera only, that means it doesn't measure depth at all.
OnePlus knows this and has restricted its use to unlocking the galaxy s7 battery replacement . It can't be used to access securely locked apps or for authenticating payments on the Google Play Store.
