HMD Global successfully managed to put Nokia in the spotlight again by releasing well-built, reasonably-priced devices. Couple that with timely software updates and you have pretty much everything one can ask for. Their only fault, at the moment, is the complete and utter disregard for the developer community. The company is notorious for locking down bootloader and failing to release kernel source code. However, HMD continues to promise new features and delivers on said promises, as we've seen with the Lumia Pro Camera Mode. Today, the company tweeted that some of their devices would receive support for Face unlock in a future update.
@deepalakshmii Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia 7 plus and the new Nokia 6, as well as the Nokia 8 will get face unlock as an OTA update in the coming months
— Nokia Mobile (@Nokiamobile) June 23, 2018
Face Unlock is all the rage with companies these days and everyone is rushing to implement it in their devices. I'm not too fond of it personally and think that it's a colossal waste of time and a gaping security hole, but that's just me. Promising a feature is one thing and implementing it is another, especially when it has biometrics involved. We've seen several versions of the feature implemented in a variety of ways. While some companies use a modified version of Android's Smart Unlock, others rely on dedicated sensors for the task. It'll be interesting to see which method HMD employs for their devices. Considering the lack of dedicated sensors on the three devices, I'm willing to wager that it'll be the former.
It is very likely that Face Unlock support will be bundled with the stable release of Android P. Those who are enrolled in the Android P beta program might even get to see it earlier. Based on the company's track record so far, it is safe to assume that most, if not all, Nokia devices will get Android P before the year ends. Maybe, we'll even get to see support for Face Unlock on devices other than the three mentioned above. It's a bit too early to speculate, but one can hope.
