Samsung Galaxy S10 now supports 3D Face Unlock, but there is a catch

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Samsung went wild with the launch of the Galaxy S10 series when for the first time it unveiled up to four variants of the same phone – the Galaxy S10e, Galaxy S10, Galaxy S10+, and Galaxy S10 5G.

Despite all four sharing the same Galaxy S10 name tag, they have their own set of differences, as you would expect. Besides the usual suspects of display size and battery capacity, the other aspect that sets these four phones apart is their photography setup.

The smallest of them all, the S10e, has a pair of lenses on the back and a single shooter on the front. While the standard S10 also gets a single-lens selfie shooter, the back panel houses three lenses.

The bigger Galaxy S10+ keeps the same rear camera setup as the standard Galaxy S10, but the front shooter has a second lens for wide-angle selfies. Things get even more interesting with the Galaxy S10 5G, the baddest of them all.

While the back panel gets another 3D ToF sensor to make it a total of four lenses on the S10 5G, the front panel keeps a two-lens setup akin to the Galaxy S10+. However, instead of a wide-angle lens, the S10 5G’s second lens is a ToF camera.

To date, justifying the presence of the ToF camera on the front of the Galaxy S10 5G instead of a wide-angle lens like the Galaxy S10+ has been a huge problem. But this is no more, at least if you are taking part in the ongoing One UI 2.0 beta program.

Apparently, the second Galaxy S10 5G One UI 2.0 beta update not only brings bug fixes and performance improvements to the initial Android 10 update, but it also makes the ToF sensor on the front panel more useful.

Going forward, the S10 5G will now support 3D Face Unlock, much like the Google Pixel 4 and iPhone 11. It’s worth noting that since the S10e, S10, and S10+ missed out on the ToF sensor, you must be owning the S10 5G in order to use 3D Face Unlock for biometric authentication.

Again, the 3D Face Unlock feature is still limited to Galaxy S10 5G users taking part in the One UI 2.0 beta program, but it should make it to the stable channel when the update arrives in the coming weeks.

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