Can the iPhone still perform facial recognition when wearing a mask?

As wearing masks has become an important measure to protect against the new coronavirus epidemic, many iPhone users have also encountered the trouble of their phones being unable to perform facial recognition because the masks cover the face. Subsequently, many "folk remedies" have emerged on how to make the iPhone learn to recognize the owner's face after wearing a mask.

"Wearing a mask" conflicts with facial unlocking

Most smartphones now offer facial unlocking, but due to the current severe epidemic situation, it is necessary to wear a mask when going out. Under such usage conditions, models like iPhone that only support facial recognition face major usage problems. The phone cannot recognize users wearing masks, causing the phone to be unable to unlock successfully, because the Touch ID function has been cancelled since iPhone X, forcing users to manually enter a password to unlock the phone.

The reason why iPhones with 3D facial recognition are difficult to unlock when users wear masks is that Face ID recognition is highly secure and can instantly sense the user's facial features through 30,000 points to ensure that the recognized face cannot be deceived by photos or related imitations. However, some models with 2D facial recognition solutions can only recognize 128 facial feature points, so using a photo can fool the verification.

Some users can successfully unlock their smartphones even when wearing masks. Generally speaking, there are three main reasons. First, some users use some Android models that do not use 3D face recognition technology and have low security. In the past, even a photo could be used to unlock the phone. Second, some users do not wear masks properly when using iPhones, such as exposing their noses. Through the learning ability of neural networks, there is a certain chance of successful unlocking. Third, some iPhone users' phones can indeed recognize the owner wearing a mask, but the number of successful users is currently low.

As for the rumors on the Internet that you can add a method to Face ID while wearing a mask in the iPhone settings, it is actually a rumor. When the user wears a mask to enter the Face ID, the system will prompt the user to show his entire face, which means that it is impossible to successfully enter the face while wearing a mask.

Can your phone learn to recognize you wearing a mask?

The reason why some users believe that the iPhone may be able to identify owners wearing masks through self-learning capabilities is that the iPhone has a built-in neural network engine in the mobile phone chip. For example, the neural network engine in the latest A13 chip has 8 cores, which can increase the speed by up to 20%. At the same time, two new machine learning accelerators have been added, which can perform matrix mathematical operations at up to six times the speed of the past.

That is to say, if an iPhone user suddenly wears glasses one day, the phone may fail to recognize it for the first time and require the user to enter a password to unlock it. The machine then learns the changes in the user's facial features, and facial unlocking can be achieved the next time the user turns on the phone.

So there is a saying on the Internet that as long as you use the iPhone to unlock it while wearing a mask, and enter the password 50 times, the machine can successfully learn the owner's face wearing a mask. The user needs to wear the same mask during the whole process. However, many people have tried to enter 50 or even 100 times and found that the phone still cannot recognize the owner's face after wearing a mask. However, some users have found that their iPhone can learn to recognize their appearance after wearing a mask.

According to analysis, the reason for this situation may be that the facial area of ​​each person is different, resulting in different ranges of mask coverage. Once the recognized area reaches an effective area, it is possible to successfully recognize it. Previous cases have shown that if the user wears sunglasses, it will also trigger the iPhone's Face ID machine learning mechanism, and the size of the sunglasses lens also determines the number of learning times. However, after the learning is completed, if the user wears sunglasses but not a hat, it can basically be recognized. Once a hat that covers the forehead is worn, the probability of requiring a password is higher, and the owner's face wearing both a hat and sunglasses will not continue to learn. This also indirectly explains the phenomenon mentioned above that some users found that although they wore a mask, exposing their nose can greatly increase the recognition success rate.

In the end, it is not difficult to find that for security reasons, mobile phones have a default effective facial recognition area in order to collect a sufficient number of recognition points. If you want the iPhone to learn to recognize the owner wearing a mask, the chance of success is very small.

How to make unlocking faster

So, instead of mindlessly entering the password into your iPhone 50 or even 100 times, it is better to take a roundabout way to unlock the phone faster.

For security reasons, a power-on password is still required, but if you have previously chosen a combination of letters and numbers, or added uppercase and lowercase letters and special characters, then it is obviously inefficient to enter the password every time you turn on your phone when you go out, so you might as well change it to a purely numeric password.

In addition, after swiping on the wake-up screen, simply tap the "Face ID" text on the screen and the phone will directly enter the password input interface, saving a lot of useless recognition time.

In WeChat and Alipay, two commonly used payment apps, you can temporarily turn off the "Face Payment" function in the settings, and directly enter the payment password to pay. There is no need to wait for two failed facial recognitions before entering the payment password.

In addition, if you cannot accept the inconvenience of having to enter a password to unlock your phone after wearing a mask, if you have an old iPhone 8, iPhone 7 or other models with Touch ID at home, you may want to use them temporarily for the convenience of going out. With iCloud, full interoperability and migration between devices is not a problem.

Or you can use an Android phone temporarily. After all, most Android phones have basically given up on 3D face recognition and have adopted under-screen fingerprint recognition solutions. It also has a face unlocking function. Although 2D face recognition is not safe, many users have confirmed that it can indeed recognize the owner wearing a mask.