Samsung’s facial recognition technology that the company implemented in the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus cannot be used for mobile payments, according to a report from the Korea Herald. This report is based on the info provided by ‘a source from Samsung’, and also a number of industry analysts. Now, the report goes on saying that the company’s facial recognition technology is still about four years away from being used for mobile payments, which means previous reports were totally wrong. For those of you who are not in the loop, recent reports claimed that the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus will be able to utilize such technology in order to make mobile payments, but that won’t be the case if the source is to be believed.
Samsung’s facial recognition technology is considered to be more convenient than an iris scanner, which is also built into the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus. Samsung considers such tech to be the next-gen biometric technology, and they’re probably aiming to replace both fingerprint scanners and iris scanner with it, at least according to the Korea Herald. Why? Well, this technology can be utilized by simply looking at the phone, you don’t really have to position your eyes perfectly or anything of the sort. “In order for facial recognition to be solely used for financial transactions, it would take more than four years considering the current camera and deep learning technology levels,” said a source from Samsung to the Korea Herald. All in all, Samsung’s facial recognition technology is, at the moment, a step down from fingerprint scanner and iris scanner in terms of security, at least it seems like it based on the provided info.
Now, it remains to be seen what will happen next, will fingerprint and iris scanners perish in order to make way for facial recognition technology? Well, almost certainly not, all of those methods are quite convenient and will become more convenient in time, as they’re perfected. Fingerprint scanners work wonders on smartphones already, and iris scanners have managed to become really reliable over the years as well. It will be interesting to see if Samsung plans to include all three of those security options in the Galaxy S9 as well, but its announcement is almost a year away, so there’s still plenty of time for that.