Pixel 7 series is coming soon, and the Google launch conference is scheduled to be held on October 6. Yet people don't have to wait another week to learn everything about Google's two new phones. A new discovery suggests that the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro may support safer face unlocking—although lacking dedicated hardware like the iPhone.
However, Google may have found a way to improve the security of facial unlocking with just one front selfie camera.
Google's Face Unlock History
April's report hinted that although Google abandoned technology similar to Face ID, it is providing facial recognition support for its Pixel phones. A few years ago, Google launched its version of 3D facial recognition technology. The Pixel 4's face unlocking is as safe as the iPhone's Face ID. And it has an radar component, which is what apple lacks.
The downside is that Google has to compromise on the Pixel 4 design. This phone looks worse than the grooves on the iPhone. The Pixel 4 has a huge "forehead" border on the top, and it contains all the face unlock components inside.
After that, Google exited this feature and chose to equip the Pixel with a better hole-type camera design. The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will also get the same full-screen design as the Pixel 6 series and are equipped with a hole-punch selfie camera. With this in mind, it seems impossible to appear on the face unlock.
Specifically, Google may choose to support 2D face recognition, which is much less secure than Face ID. And before Apple launched the unparalleled Face ID feature, the Android system had this feature.
In addition, Google may combine 2D face unlock with under-screen fingerprint sensor to improve security.
However, Google just added the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro to the Google Play Console before next week's launch. It was there that Mishaal Rahman discovered an exciting progress on facial unlocking.
Face Unlocking How it may run on Pixel 7 phones
Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro both support "android.hardware.biometrics.face". According to Rahman, this means these phones support secure facial unlocking. Even so, this is not exactly similar to the 3D face recognition of all iPhone flagships released since iPhone X.
Other Pixels with this feature only have Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, or Google's only phone that includes 3D face recognition hardware.
As for how face unlock works on Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, we can only wait until the official explanation. But 9to5Google believes they already know how the feature works. Google will use the selfie camera's dual-pixel autofocus (DPAF) to create a depth map. This, in turn, could lead to some kind of 3D face recognition.
The blog found Google's face unlocking progress on the Pixel 6 and 7 series back in June. Last year’s Pixel 6 Pro may also support the feature, thanks to a specific selfie mirror, dual-pixel autofocus mode.
DPAF has been used to generate depth maps for portrait mode since Pixel 2, and Google has been constantly improving its approach since then. The company also has algorithms to get depth from motion, which requires only an RGB camera, while it believes that Tensor can perform faster, more accurate, and more power-efficient face detection in the background of photography. Google obviously has hardware and software components for face unlocking.
However, this is just a guess, because Google has never explained this face unlock mystery. Next week, people will learn everything about face recognition on the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro and how safe it is.
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