Google blog:
Pixel 4 will be the first device with Soli, powering our new Motion Sense features to allow you to skip songs, snooze alarms, and silence phone calls, just by waving your hand. These capabilities are just the start, and just as Pixels get better over time, Motion Sense will evolve as well. Motion Sense will be available in select Pixel countries.
And:
Unlocking your phone should be easy, fast, and secure. Your device should be able to recognize you—and only you—without any fuss. Face unlock may be a familiar feature for smartphones, but we’re engineering it differently.
Differently? How?
Other phones require you to lift the device all the way up, pose in a certain way, wait for it to unlock, and then swipe to get to the homescreen. Pixel 4 does all of that in a much more streamlined way. As you reach for Pixel 4, Soli proactively turns on the face unlock sensors, recognizing that you may want to unlock your phone.
If the face unlock sensors and algorithms recognize you, the phone will open as you pick it up, all in one motion. Better yet, face unlock works in almost any orientation—even if you’re holding it upside down—and you can use it for secure payments and app authentication too.
Assuming this tech works as advertised, Google just raised the bar for Face ID. As is, I often have to shift my iPhone, tweaking the angle to my face, in order to get Face ID to kick in. This is no big deal, but it does throw a delay in there. I almost never have to enter my passcode, but I often have to play a bit for Face ID to kick in.
And though I can get Face ID to kick in with my iPhone a bit off to the side, it never works when sitting flat on my desk or when upside down.
The advantage to Google’s announced approach is that it supports wider angles and orientations, and also starts the recognition process when you reach for your phone, not waiting for a tap on the screen. A subtle point, but a natural next evolution.
Is Apple working on this? I suspect they already have such experiments in the lab, but only release what works really well on all Face ID phones, including the iPhone X. Being able to detect gestures, such as a hand reaching for your phone, no doubt requires some specialized software and powerful machine learning processors. Seems like this should be doable for Apple, given the power of the onboard machine learning hardware already in your iPhone and iPad.
Read the linked Google blog. Interesting stuff.
On iOS, how would lock screen notifications and widgets work? What are the privacy/security implications of not requiring explicit user interaction with the device? Ditto for unlocking your phone at more obtuse angles?
Sometimes I pick up my phone just to look at notifications. Sometimes I don’t want it to automatically open. Also, I’m not sure how I’d feel waving my hands over my phone to skip a track like some sort of magician. The angles thing, totally could get better with FaceID. The worst is an iPad on a flat surface like a desk and it not recognizing your face.
Certainly not claiming this isn’t an upgrade over the iPhone experience in some respects but you don’t have to tap the iPhone screen now unless you are leaving your phone on a table or something, If you pick up your phone and start moving it towards your face the phone wakes up and unlocks.
I do personally prefer the swipe to go to the home screen so I can easily look at notifications. It does’t really slow the process down for me to swipe in a perceptible way as I am used to swiping as I pick my phone up before the phone is unlocked if thats what I want to do since you can swipe before or while face id is scanning your face.
Lol at allowing Google to directly access your facial recognition data. No thanks.
I also wonder if the battery is going to be run down if the Pixel is sitting under a ceiling fan or anything else that’s moving like trees in a breeze?
I’m sure Apple will be watching and do the good parts right and avoid the inevitable things Google didn’t bother testing for before launching this spitball at the public wall.
The hand waving thing is not new. There was a device that came out a few years back that was supposed to give us this new 3D way to control our computers by waving and pointing with our hands.
It failed miserably.
I’d prefer settings to allow it, myself.
(Can it tell the difference between you picking up your phone and someone else doing so and pointing it at you, for instance?)
“As is, I often have to shift my iPhone, tweaking the angle to my face, in order to get Face ID to kick in. ”
And I don’t. I can squint at it in the dark and it works. The difference is likely that I’ve trained it by not just trying repeatedly but by entering the 6 digit pass code so FaceID can know “Oh that face WAS Rick…”
Finally… you’re comparing real world operation with an idealized description.
Ironic that an earlier link was about “cop mode”. Has Google really raised the bar or simply made it easier for the police to unlock your phone? Grab it and sort of point it in your direction.
Same here. So instead of lazily picking up my phone and looking at the notifications with one hand, I have to pick up my phone and use two hands to immediately swipe down the notification shade? I don’t think this is exactly the advancement in convenience you’re aiming for, Goog.
I dig their overall “ambient computing” drive, but going out of their way to make information less accessible (and in this case ironically a feature they dubbed Ambient Display) is a miss.
“Attention aware” aspect of FaceID is supposed to be a security feature, not an inconvenience. Though you CAN turn it off, and let the phone unlock without having to look at it. Another FYI, the iPad Pro can unlock in any orientation with a wider field, so I wouldn’t call Google the pioneers here.
Basically Google is saying, OUR version can unlock passively without any involvement from the user.
Apples is capable of that as well, they simply spent more time sweating the security implications of that. if I recall, people were raising a big stink about the iPhone X being vulnerable to forced entry by law enforcement simply holding your phone up to your face. I don’t see the same FUD getting thrown at Google for actually making that possible.
Let me know when they ship it with all those features. Then you can write panicky news stories.
Wow you guys really need to re setup FaceID. It easily recogizes me even with sunglasses, neck support brace, and Bose headphones on all at the same time.
Um, can we just wait to see if it works?
Just sayin…
The new iPhones will do this. The current iPad with FaceID does this.
I’ll take fingerprint readers.
“Other phones require you to lift the device all the way up, pose in a certain way, wait for it to unlock, and then swipe to get to the homescreen.”
False. You neither have to lift an iphone all the way up to scan, nor do you have to wait for it to unlock then swipe. Just pick it up and swipe. That’s it. It auto scans and you don’t have to wait for it, you can swipe before it even starts or finishes. Once it does, it goes to the home screen.