At the launch of the honor V10, honor and its parent company, Huawei, took the opportunity to share a new facial recognition technology suite. Essentially Huawei’s own take on Apple’s Face ID, the new sensor package comprises of an IR camera and a VCSEL (vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser) unit.
What makes this technology better is the depth of data being scanned by the system. While Apple’s Face ID is secure enough to be used as biometric security, Huawei’s system gathers ten times more data points on the face than its Apple’s solution.
During the presentation, the company said that the system can generate 300,000 data points in 10 seconds of scanning. The system is also designed to be super fast, allowing users to unlock the phone within 0.4 seconds from initial scan.
Huawei/honor then showed a comparison between Apple’s Animoji and its own version. Given the extra data points, the Chinese company’s new system has the upper hand here, replicating more complex facial expressions, even when sticking out the tongue.
In the future, Huawei plans to add on LIDAR into the suite of sensors. This is so that users can scan objects and use it in virtual or augmented reality applications on the phone.
However, the company did not share any timeline on when this system will make its debut. It’ll likely make an appearance on a Huawei flagship first, before trickling to a honor flagship – though with no timeline in sight, a 2018 launch seems unlikely.
