Vote now: Do we need Face unlock on Pixel phones?

Most of you probably know my sentiment toward under-display fingerprint scanners. In a nutshell, I find them quite unreliable, especially after the first couple of weeks, I also never quite manage to hit an under-display scanner on the first try.

Now, it might just be me but I like the face recognition in my old Mate 20 Pro, and the one Apple slaps on its iPhones also works pretty well. So, today we’re talking about Google and face unlock - this strange relationship dates back to the Pixel 4.

Back in the day, Google introduced the ability to unlock your phone, confirm payments, and sign in to some apps using only your gorgeous face, and many people loved it. Now, face unlock was removed due to security issues and concerns in Android 10 for phones which use only the front camera for face recognition.

This does make sense, for a plethora of reasons, but I won’t delve into the security side of things. However, this meant that Pixel phones no longer had the ability to use face unlock, as they didn’t have the necessary sensors.

Fast forward to present days and the Pixel 6 family - according to the latest rumors, Google is planning to bring the face unlock feature to its latest series - the Pixel 6 Pro in particular. Now, it’s not clear how this would work, as the new pixels don’t sport any special hardware to support face unlock - but Google might have devised some clever software wizardry to make it happen.

The question is - do we need face unlock on our Pixel phones? I know I would love to use face unlock for non-critical things like just going straight to my home screen and tapping the speed dial shortcuts to connect with my friends with just one action (take that, iPhone!).