Android's facial recognition feature to be more secure than Apple's iPhone; here's why

The face recognition feature has become much more significant and relevant over the years. Apple’s FaceID has been known as one of the most secure ways of biometric authentication devised on smartphones, and while Android has had a similar feature for a few years now, it never really came close to FaceID and continues to struggle with its authentication method. However, it may all change sometime soon as Trinamix, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BASF SE, the world's largest chemical company, has come up with a mechanism to authenticate living tissue itself.

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As for now, the ways in which the facial recognition functions is by casting a three-dimensional dot matrix on an individual’s face, thereby making it secure. However, the process isn’t perfect as in the case of a deceased person, one may still use his face to unlock his iPhone, as long as his eyes were open.

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Trinamix new method of facial recognition to scan skin tissues

And while it may sound morbid, it is in fact, a real challenge when it comes to facial recognition. Trinamix has now come up with an added layer of security for facial recognition. It has been designed in a way that it will be able to scan through the skin tissue to identify if the person is actually living or dead.

This new method will make use of a number of patented algorithms to process the image backscatter data which will distinguish between different types of materials, including a living and non-living tissue. As a result, it can be said that the new method of facial recognition will be much more secure than it is right now as it relies solely on software.

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This simply indicates that any OEM that has access to a 3D-dot projector-based facial recognition system can certainly make their implementation of the facial-recognition feature much stronger than Apple’s FaceID. Perhaps, this is the reason why Qualcomm has got into an agreement with Trinamix to bring this new technology to Android devices. The processing part will be handled by Qualcomm’s Hexagon digital signal processor, meaning that the technology can be made available to all the Android smartphone manufacturers. There have also been rumours around Apple working to improve the security for its FaceID hardware, which indicates that both Android and iOS ecosystems are actively trying to make their respective devices more secure.

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Image credits: Apple