Face unlock for the Pixels Pro was found in Android 12L
Right now, the Pixel 6 phones are struggling with their below-average under-display fingerprint sensors. Other than that, people have the option to use pins, patterns, and passwords to unlock their phones; this doesn’t quite sit well with most users.
Google had a pretty useful face unlock mechanism for its Pixel 4 phones, so much so that it got rid of the fingerprint sensor because of it. Now, confusingly, Google decided to drop face unlock altogether.
However, it seems that this will not be the case for much longer. The Android 12L beta is now out, and people are digging into the code and finding some important details. Digging in the app’s code, we see
However, there may be one big exclusion.
Right now, this code was only found in the Android 12L beta for the Pixel 6 Pro. Looking at the code in a regular Pixel 6 phone, we don’t see those files. This may mean that face unlock will only be available for the Pixel 6 Pro. This will be a big bummer for those who bought the regular Pixel 6. They’re experiencing all the same fingerprint scanner issues as those with the Pro, so we’d expect Google to provide this solution to both models. Sure, face unlock could be an incentive to get the more expensive model, but there’s really no reason why this can’t be available on the regular Pixel 6. Both phones share the same camera technology and they both share the same Tensor chip.
We don’t know much information just yet.
As with any leak, you should take this with a grain of salt. This was buried deep within the code for Android 12L, which means that it could possibly never come to the light. Google hasn’t made any statements about bringing face unlock to the Pixel 6 Pro, so it’s anyone’s guess at this point.
