The facial recognition stuff seems odd to me, in the sense that I can't really figure out what it would be used for (aside from a silly smile detector in the camera app), but hopefully it'll be locked behind permission prompts (or barely accessible at all) in third party apps.
I hope it works - I rather like TouchID and would be disappointed to have it replaced by something crappier.
my concern with any facial recognition replacing what is currently in use is that many times I unlock my phone without having to look at it and rely on that. The old slip it out of my pocket and quick glance to see if I need to address something now
That said, I don't think it'll ever happen - that placement of the sensor is so much of an Android-ism that I doubt Apple would ever allow themselves to adopt it.
Any type of "authentication" wouldn't make sense, that'd be as silly as a finger print scanner. Smile detector might be fun but certainly not worth the privacy trade off. There's only 1 useful feature I can think of and I've yet to see it done: when my head is sideways and the phone is sideways, I'm lying down, don't rotate the frickin' screen. Still not worth the privacy trade off, but people who don't care will be very happy.
Developers can then check what levels are fun to play, and what are a chore. That way they can optimize their future games, or even change the level architecture based on the emotional level of the player.
I think you can apply this strategy to ads too, to learn what kind of ad an user likes or dislikes, so they can target the ads a little bit better/easier.
Which is exactly why I will refuse to give any facial recognition data to third party apps.
1. People will give permission for it without realising their personal information, preferences and data will be collected, aggregated and used to build an overall profile of them as a person, to find the most effective way of convincing them to buy things. Much like the old flashlight apps that curiously required location permissions, it'll be permission creep all over again.
2. Facial gestures are involuntary. You don't explicitly give permission for the fact that X made you smile and Y made you frown because it'll happen before you're even consciously aware that you've done it.
Why do you think ad providers will optimise for things that make me happy? Why not optimise for things that make me worried, and more likely to purchase the answer whatever "problem" they are putting in front of me?
That is, maximized micro transactions and addictive potential.
That's not my experience. When I put the phone in my pocket I have to take care of positionning the back against my body otherwise my skin through the jeans trigger pocket calls.
With my old Moto X, I could just wave my hand over the phone while it was laying next to me and a minimal version of the lock screen with clock and notifications would show up.
On my current phone (Pixel) it does the same with a double tap: clock, notifications, nothing else. The phone doesn't unlock until I use the fingerprint reader or swipe my lock pattern.
I was skeptical, but I have a friend who has a similar thing running on his Windows box and it works surprisingly well.
They have many options, including making the "tap" a force touch. So requiring a certain amount of pressure before actually turning on. Or requiring a double tap. Or being more of a "tap to unlock" using raise to wake.
Like how they thought about how a user's hand could short the antenna circuit with the iPhone 4? Not to entirely discredit the effort their engineers put into these phones, but oversights happen and some aren't discovered until you get enough hands on the device.
That is how it has been implemented in the Android phones I've used so far.
1. Double-tap on the screen. Lockscreen appears.
2. Check the clock.
3. Fumble annoyedly until finding the power button to turn the screen off.
I guess they're worried about false positives. But LG solved this by only allowing double tap to turn off from any of the default apps (home screen, notifications, settings, etc). You had to quit out of third party apps to turn it off that way.