This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
I'm stuck with my iPhone, and I can't move on (and trust me, I want to).
In the past few years, all of my attempts to move away from the iPhone have failed. I pick up the latest flagship Android phone and I love so many things about it, but then I realize it is missing the one simple feature I use dozens (if not hundreds) of times every days.
Yep, Face ID.
Android phones have just given up
Huawei phones had 3D face recognition... 5 years ago
Why has Android still not copied Apple's secure Face ID unlock system is honestly beyond me. There were some very successful early attempts — the Huawei Mate 20 Pro had both 3D face recognition and a fingerprint scanner. But then Huawei got on the US Government blacklist and there were only a few isolated attempts at an Android Face ID after that.
The Google Pixel series had it for exactly one year (the Pixel 4 series), and then dropped it for good. This was probably our best hope at Face ID, coming from the Android maker itself.
The Pixel 4 had a flood illuminator, IR camera, and dot projector — all the components that make up Apple’s Face ID. And it was also super fast, secure, and worked for both apps and payments. Heck, it went even a step further, supporting gesture-based Motion Sense via radar (Project Soli), so you could skip a track with a wave.
There was a downside then — the giant top bezel on the Pixel 4 series was not a pretty sight, but I'm sure Google could have made this smaller, similar to the pill-shaped Face ID used in current iPhones.
Samsung also dabbled with its own take — iris recognition, starting with the Galaxy Note 7 (aka the exploding phone) and all the way into the Galaxy S9 series (non-explosive models). But then for iris recognition to work it required users to look at their phones at a very specific angle and distance, plus it was slower than the Face ID alternative. Additionally, it was also not as secure as the 3D scan you got with Face ID.
The pandemic effect on Face ID
But the real killer of Face ID on Android might have actually been the Covid pandemic.
With masks everywhere, it was just not the time for a Face ID system (and for a while, it was actually iPhones that looked disadvantage for not supporting a touch ID).
All of that resulted in Android phone makers becoming complacent and ditching the effort altogether.
But the pandemic is (thankfully) behind us, and the convenience of Face ID remains one of the strongest suits of the iPhone. I check my phones dozens if not hundreds times a day. Most of those times, a quick glance with Face ID delicately reveals my notifications and I don't need to physically interact with the phone at all.
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The happy exception
Luckily, not all hope is lost.
There is one exception in the Android camp and it comes from Honor. Its recent flagship phones (the Honor Magic 6 Pro and Honor Magic 7 Pro) support a secure, 3D face recognition system similar to the one on iPhones. That means that they don't just use a picture of your face, but trace its 3D contours for a truly secure unlock.
The closest another Android phone comes to this is the Pixel 9, which uses a higher-security but still 2D face unlock. However, that phone needs light to work well, and the Honor Magic series work well even in darkness. Yep, just like an iPhone, and the pill-shaped design does not take up too much space either.
But why don't mainstream Android phones pick this up is really hard for me to grasp. I would love to have this on a Samsung Galaxy phone or a OnePlus.
What about you? Any iPhone users stuck with their devices and unable to move on to Android because of Face ID?
Victor, a seasoned mobile technology expert, has spent over a decade at PhoneArena, exploring the depths of mobile photography and reviewing hundreds of smartphones across Android and iOS ecosystems. His passion for technology, coupled with his extensive knowledge of smartphone cameras and battery life, has positioned him as a leading voice in the mobile tech industry.
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