The Pixel 7 series has finally been released and is now available for pre-order, and with it comes a lot of new features for the new phones. One feature that many Pixel users have been waiting for is the face unlock feature, which is finally being supported on the Pixel 7 series. However, the feature doesn’t seem to be as comprehensive as some had hoped.
Blogger Andreas Proschofsky points out that the face unlock feature on the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro can only be used to unlock the phone. This means that it can’t be used for other authentication purposes, such as mobile payments or password managers.
According to Proschofsky, Google says that the feature is classified as a Type 1 biometric, which means that it is not for security purposes, but only for “convenience”. Google has also confirmed this to media outlets Android Police, telling them that the feature can only be used to unlock the phone.
While Google touted its machine learning capabilities when introducing the Pixel 7’s face unlock, it makes sense for the company to limit the feature. Because the phone doesn’t have the necessary hardware to provide secure facial recognition capabilities, it’s quite possible to fool the face recognition system without dedicated hardware.
The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro also support under-screen fingerprinting, so it’s best to avoid using the face unlock feature if security is very important.
