Apple's FaceID vs OnePlus' Face Unlock: The ultimate face-off'

2017 has been a year critical to the smartphone manufacturing entities. All of them have tried to bring a major dollop of innovation in two primary areas — display and security. While most of the OEMs have cracked the narrow-bezel display in their own ways, the area of biometric verification security has been dominated by one company pretty-nearly perfectly — Apple with their FaceID. However, OnePlus has tried their hand at facial recognition technology a bit differently with the OnePlus 5T’s Face Unlock, which has been drawing attention around the world with its superfast unlocking speeds.

While both appear to do the same function, the technologies they use are miles apart from each other, resulting in varying ways of operation. Therefore, to understand the technologies effectively, we should dig in deep.

Apple’s FaceID

Apple’s FaceID is dependent on dedicated hardware on the face of the iPhone X (which results in its top-notch). FaceID works on the principle of collecting variation in distance and depth from infrared light sources. The TrueDepth camera consists of three major elements — Flood illuminator, Infrared camera and Dot projector. When there’s a need for biometric verification, the system engages the dot projector to throw around 30,000 infrared dots on the person’s face. Simultaneously, the Flood Illuminator creates infrared lighting to replicate normal lighting conditions. The Infrared camera is then assigned to click a photo of the infrared dot-filled face and send it to the A11 Bionic chip, where Apple’s algorithms do their magic to compare the photo with the original data and then unlock the phone. All of this happens within a few milliseconds, resulting in TouchID-rivalling verification speeds.

FaceID at work, throwing 30,000 IR dots and reading it to authenticate your face.

The FaceID has been one of the most controversial features of the iPhone X this fall. FaceID has received a fair amount of criticisms from geeks around the world, who have managed to hack it with twins or even face masks. People have also expressed unacceptance towards the FaceID’s notch on the top, claiming to spoil the look of the iPhone X. Apple is still tweaking FaceID so as to improve the verification abilities.

OnePlus’ Face Unlock

OnePlus’ Face Unlock is a major departure from the complex hardware requirements of the FaceID. The OnePlus 5T doesn’t have an array of sensors sitting above the display, instead, it utilises the selfie camera to do its verification. Face Unlock simply takes a picture of the user’s face with visible light spectrum and compares it with stored data. However, Face Unlock utilises complex algorithms to detect depth information and various other parameters to differentiate between various human faces. OnePlus says that the phone understands whether the subject is emitting light (a phone) versus reflecting (your actual face) by analysing shadows and bright areas. Other current checks related to this particular scenario is to look for screen reflections, the presence of a square element (shape of the phone) and more.

Since there’s no dedicated hardware to assist Face Unlock, it is limited by ambient lighting conditions. A camera needs light to capture a photo and so does the Face Unlock — it doesn’t work in extremely low-light conditions or during night time. up until now, all our attempts at unlocking our OnePlus 5T review unit with a selfie or a photograph haven’t born fruit, indicating that the system is working as intended. OnePlus CEO and Founder Pete Lau, has stated on the OnePlus blog that they are constantly working on the Face Unlock feature to improve the recognition as well detection in low-light scenarios.

Which is better?

Both the systems have their own set of drawbacks. Both Apple and OnePlus agree that facial recognition is still at a very nascent stage and will take time to be satisfactorily safe. If we have to pick between the two, Apple’s FaceID is slightly more capable of unlocking even in darker conditions, therefore making it the facial recognition technology easy to live with. However, we expect OnePlus to implement some arrangement to let their superfast Face Unlock work in low-light conditions with future updates.