Face unlock easily defeated with photo in over 30 smartphone models

We’ve seen a resurgence in face unlock across the mobile industry, arguably due to Apple’s iPhone X touting the technology. Unfortunately, a new study shows that plenty of phones can be defeated with a simple photo.

The Dutch Consumentenbond organization found that out of 110 devices tested, 42 could be unlocked with a high quality photo of the owner (h/t: The Register). To be fair, the organization counted regional and dual-SIM variants as separate models in its testing, so the real number of dodgy devices is actually in the 30s.

Nevertheless, this still represents a massive number of devices that are vulnerable to a simple photo. The list wasn’t restricted to a few manufacturers either, as the likes of Alcatel, BlackBerry, Huawei, Lenovo, Nokia, Sony, and Xiaomi were all featured here.

Most of these phones were budget devices, but we also have a few flagships affected by shoddy face unlock. These devices include the HTC U11 Plus, the HUAWEI P20 Pro, and Sony’s Xperia XZ2 series.

There were plenty of devices that passed the test, however, including the Alcatel 3V, HONOR 10, HTC U12 Plus, HUAWEI Mate 20 series, the OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 6, and Samsung’s 2018 flagships. Additionally, all 2018 iPhone models passed the test. Oddly enough, the consumer watchdog also counted different storage variants as separate entries. Weird.

Anyway, the organization found that several unlocked devices had more stringent face unlock settings to defeat photos, such as LG’s 2018 flagships and the HONOR 7A. You can check out the full list below.

If anything, we hope this study shames brands into paying more attention to facial recognition. Do you use face unlock on your smartphone? Let us know in the comments!

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