Or at least it was until some wiseguy decided to try and beat the feature at it's own game. And let's just say, he won. It was posed as a question from Twitter to SoyaCincau as to whether or not the Galaxy Nexus face unlock feature could be unlocked using a printed picture of the owner's face. In his test, he didn't even need to kill a tree or waste ink on printing a picture. He used the Galaxy Note device and took his own picture. And guess what, it worked. The Samsung Galaxy Nexus unlocked.
It has also been called to question as to whether he setup the device to unlock with the picture or setup the phone to behave the way it did. His answer is that he setup the phone to unlock using his face, not the picture. And he is sticking to that story. Which in my opinion is completely believable. After all, facial recognition isn't doing anything other than comparing a fresh image of your face with one on file somewhere in a database tucked away inside the operating system on the phone (all geeky references to how the technology actually works aside, this is basically it).
So, the concept that this could be tricked makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think?
I can see a couple of ways this could be a pain for someone. Say someone is having a meal with you and snipes a picture of you while you're waiting for your meal using their iPhone 4S (for example). You get up and go to the restroom and while you're gone they use the image of you on their device and unlock your phone. For kicks they now set your unlock screen feature to match their face. It seems you'd be locked out of your own phone right?
I like the concept of facial recognition for unlocking the device. However, I don't see how this is anymore secure than a lock screen pattern or passcode. Both of which can easily be circumvented should someone be attentive enough to watch you unlock your phone.
If you'd like to watch the video yourself check it out at:
http://youtu.be/BwfYSR7HttA
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