Google announced that it will hold a news conference on October 6 at 23:00 GMT, launching the Pixel 7 / Pro series phones and Pixel Watch smartwatch and many other new accessories. Among them, the Pixel 7 / Pro series phones will be equipped with a Tensor G2 processor.
Yesterday, Google pushed out the Android 13 QPR1 Beta 1 update for Pixel phones. According to 9To5Google today, in the code of Android 13 QPR1 Beta 1, Google mentioned the face unlock feature. The code says: “Face unlock works best when there’s enough light and you’re not wearing a mask or dark glasses”. Where “well-lit” means that the face unlocks feature is likely to be camera-based only, rather than the infrared camera and Soli sensor-based face recognition used on the Pixel 4.
The code found for face unlock is named “Traffic Light” and was only found on the Pixel 6 Pro running Android 13 QPR1 Beta 1, but not on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6a, according to the report. This means that only the Pixel 6 Pro may support face unlock, and the feature is expected to be updated when the Pixel 7 / Pro series phones are released.
The front-facing camera on the Pixel 6 Pro is said to support Dual Pixel Autofocus (DPAF), while the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6a do not, which could be the reason why only the Pixel 6 Pro supports face unlock.
In the Pixel 4, Google dropped support for fingerprint unlock in favor of face unlock. The feature is supported by the Pixel 4’s built-in Soli sensor. Meanwhile, the Pixel 4 has two infrared cameras that can see the shape of a person’s face, rather than relying solely on the front-facing camera to recognize flat images. On the Pixel 5 and Pixel 6, Google dropped the Soli sensor in favor of a fingerprint sensor.
