Huawei Thinks It Can Outdo Face ID — But Won’t Anytime Soon

Love it or hate it, Apple’s new Face ID system is pulling the industry forward. But Chinese smartphone vendor Huawei thinks it can outdo Apple’s facial recognition platform with its own biometric solution.

Huawei conducted a presentation of its Honor V10 handset today, the latest in a long line of flagships with reduced bezels. But brand new smartphone aside, the Chinese OEM teased something else at the end of the presentation: a depth-sensing camera system that, clearly, is meant to be a Face ID competitor.

But rather than just copy Face ID, which many Android makers have been scrambling to do, Huawei wants to one-up the Cupertino-based juggernaut. At the presentation, the company claimed that its system can capture 300,000 infrared points in about 10 seconds, according to German-language site WinFuture. If you’re keeping track, that’s about 10 times as many as the iPhone X can currently capture.

In addition, unlike current Android facial recognition systems like the ones on the OnePlus 5T and the Samsung Galaxy S8, Huawei’s solution will be secure enough to make payments and will be able to authenticate an identity as quickly as 400 milliseconds.

Not to be outdone by Apple’s more fun-focused features, Huawei also teased a not-so-subtle clone of Animoji which can also track facial expression. Its big selling point? Unlike Apple’s TrueDepth system, Huawei said that its facial mapping platform can detect if a user sticks their tongue out.

Of course, there’s a caveat to all of this. Namely, the fact that Huawei’s facial recognition system isn’t going to ship on the Honor V10 — or anytime soon, for that matter. In fact, the company failed to mention when the feature would ship at all, or which phones would use it.

In other words, Huawei teased a new technology to show that it has an answer to Face ID — even if that feature is still a few years off from being included on a Huawei device. Perhaps 2.5 years off, if previous analyst forecasts turn out to be accurate.

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