Huawei has just announced a firmware update that will allow users to unlock their phones through facial recognition – adding to its previous existing biometric fingerprint security.
The company is referring to the update as being ‘convenience’ focused, but there’s undoubtedly an element of remaining competitive in market — particularly with the announcement with Oppo’s Find X, which will allow 3D facial scanning to unlock.
“Huawei is committed to improving our new and existing customers’ experiences. We hope our customers will continue to find great enjoyment from using their Huawei smartphones. Face Unlock is a feature that has been, until now, limited to premium smartphones. Huawei is proud to be able to bring this feature to a wider, more accessible range of smartphones,” said Larking Huang, Managing Director of Huawei Australia’s Consumer Business Group:
“We are a leading innovator in smartphone technology and we will continue to provide Australian users with cutting edge products, which complement their needs and lifestyle – without having to break the bank. This firmware update ensures the majority of our phones released over the past two years, beyond our 2018 smartphone releases, feature Face Unlock capabilities.”
The update will be rolled out from today and will last until the end of July. In addition, Huawei have announced local bi-monthly firmware updates across a range of its smart phones.
Here are the models that the new update will be available on:
- P-Series (P10, P20, P20 Pro)
- Mate Series (Mate9, Mate10, Mate10 Pro)
- nova Series (nova3e, nova 2lite, nova 2i)
To enable Facial Recognition Unlock once the firmware update is installed go to Settings — Security & Privacy — Face Unlock. You then need to input or create a password and then start a facial profile enrollment.
Once enabled, users have the option to use ‘direct unlock’ which unlocks the home screen automatically or ‘slide to unlock’ which requires users to swipe the screen once their face has been recognised. The latter allows you to check the time and notifications without unlocking your phone.
So you may not be able to access 5G with Huawei products in the future, but at least you’ll be able to unlock some of them with your head.