Huawei Announces Own Version Of Face ID That Could Rival Apple's

Huawei just unveiled a new smartphone called the Honor V10, and it also announced that it is working on its own version of Apple’s Face ID technology. Huawei claims that its new facial recognition technology is better than Apple’s and it can also be used for animated emojis.

Huawei’s new facial recognition technology is made possible with the depth-sensing camera system. The Chinese phone maker says that it uses a combination of infrared and a projector to create a 3D map of a user’s face. Although the process is similar to Apple’s Face ID technology on the iPhone X, Huawei’s camera system can capture 300,000 points of the user’s face in 10 seconds. This is 10 times the number of points than what the iPhone X’s TrueDepth camera is able to capture.

If Huawei’s tech is truly that more advanced, then it might be more secure than Apple’s Face ID technology. Perhaps it may even be accurate and secure enough to be used for mobile payments and replace Huawei’s fingerprint sensors, as pointed out by Digital Trends. Like Apple’s Face ID, Huawei’s own version of the facial recognition technology can also work in a variety of lighting conditions. Since it uses infrared, it shouldn’t be a problem to unlock a phone even in the dark.

Huawei’s new camera system isn’t only for facial recognition, it can also be used for animated emojis, which Apple first debuted with the iPhone X. Huawei demoed its own animoji feature on stage and appears to also be a bit more advanced than Apple’s. Not only can it track a user’s facial expressions, but it can also detect when a user’s tongue is sticking out, according to Engadget.

Huawei’s demo showed that its animoji works with a panda emoji and an anime-style avatar, according to Android Authority. Right now, it remains uncertain how many emojis will be available to use with Huawei’s new camera system.

Huawei’s own version of Face ID seems to be quite promising, but there’s a huge problem. Huawei’s facial recognition system is not yet available on any of its products. The company’s Honor division showed off the new tech, but didn’t say which phones will have the new camera system or when the technology will start shipping.

The reveal of Huawei’s own Face ID technology may have just been a tease and it’s possible that it still needs a lot of work before it’s made available on a new device. The company may have revealed the new tech to show that they could rival Apple’s technology and gain some attention from consumers.

With Apple’s introduction of Face ID on the iPhone X, facial recognition technology has become popular once again. The recently released OnePlus 5T even featured its own version of the tech called Face Unlock, but it's less advanced and can only be used to quickly unlock the phone. With rising interest over the technology, it’s very likely that more Android smartphone makers will start creating their own version of Face ID.