"The front-facing camera will always look for your face, even when it's not activated or the device is locked," is how Qualcomm VP Judd Heap described the features that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 offers with its face unlock feature. The chipmaker believes that such a feature will improve the user experience by allowing the smartphone to be unlocked or woken up without raising it to face level.
The basic idea is that unlocking a smartphone by face is done automatically as soon as the camera sees it, no matter what position the device itself is in. As a result, the user will not need to manipulate the device to unlock it. And if the smartphone "sees" someone else's face, it can block access to it, hide some personal information or notifications on the screen.
But experts say that such a feature looks rather insecure and could threaten privacy. The threat posed by a constantly active front-facing camera could cancel out any benefits the user would get from this feature. There is a risk that intruders could use this feature to spy on the user.
However, Qualcomm itself has said that images from the camera are not sent to the cloud and apps on the gadget will not have access to them. In addition, users will be able to disable the always-on front-facing feature.
You must be logged in to post a comment.