Only in spy movies, did face scanning devices truly exist. Although, during the 2010 Nokia Innovators Hack-a-thon, a software
developer hacked together and tested a Face Recognition app in 36 hours, as the
rules stated during the contest.
Originally developed for the Symbian3 OS, this app will initially only
be compatible with new phones such as the Nokia N8 and Nokia E7. The
app simply unlocks the phone when you look into the front camera using
bio-metric recognition.
The principle is simple - you take a picture (using the front facing camera)
of your face, and hit the lock button in the app. To unlock your phone, you
take another picture and as you have the same face, there's a match and you
have access to your phone. (Relax, there's a back-up PIN system you can set and
use if you've had a rough night).
If you can, take your locking picture with your light in front of you (like
a good photographer normally would) and then when unlocking, face the strongest
light source. Apart from time.
To help get the front facing camera into the same position as you took the
photo, you have a helpful guide in the form of a ghost-like transparent image
of the target face, so you can move around to line up your face underneath the
target to aid the matching process. Anyone who's done anything online is going
to have pictures of themselves available - could a picture of you
unlock your phone? That thinking led to a quick Mission: Impossible test, and
the answer is yes, if you take a picture of the lock screen and then mirror it,
you can unlock the handset by waving your Windows Phone (or whatever) in front
of your Symbian device.
Result? No more lost passwords. Sweet.
You can try this app here.
You can try this app here.