Meet the World First Vein Recognition Smartphone

LG announced its new G8 ThinQ smartphone on Sunday, and it comes with a unique trick to unlock the phone: vein recognition.

Indeed, the LG G8 uses the veins in the palms of your hands to unlock the phone, which the company calls “Hand ID.” It’s a novel method, but it’s the same idea as advanced facial recognition.

To detect and recognize your veins, the LG G8 has what LG calls a “Z” camera that detects a users’ veins with infrared light. There’s also a 3D sensing “time of flight” (ToF) camera on the front of the LG G8 that detects the shape, thickness, and other individual characteristics of a user’s palms.

To unlock the LG G8 using Hand ID, a user needs to hover their palm above the LG G8’s selfie camera, and raise it up slowly:

Under the hood, you’ll find things like a Snapdragon 855 chipset, 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage (that can be expanded), and a 3,500 mAh battery.

Look at the spec Sheet below;

LG G8 Specifications & Price

Operating System	Android 9 Pie
Display	6.1-inch OLED 3120×1440 Gorilla Glass 6 HDR 10
Processor	Qualcomm Snapdragon 855
Storage	128GB
Expandable	microSD up to 2TB
RAM	6GB
Camera (Main)	12MP, 1.4µm pixels, ƒ/1.5, OIS 78° lens
Camera (Wide)	16MP, 1.0µm pixels, ƒ/1.9 107° lens, fixed focus
Camera (Telephoto)	12MP, 1.0µm, ƒ/2.4, 56mm OIS
Front Camera	8MP, ƒ/1.7 80° lens, fixed focus
Front Camera (Secondary)	ToF
Connectivity	Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0 LE, NFC USB-C 3.1
Audio	32-bit Hi-Fi Quad DAC Boombox speaker Crystal Sound OLED Stereo Speaker Headphone jack
Battery	3500mAh Non-removable
Charging	USB-C Quick Charge 3.0 Qi wireless
Water resistance	IP68 MIL-STD 810G certified
Security	Rear fingerprint sensor Face unlock Hand ID
Dimensions	151.9 x 71.8 x 8.4 mm
Weight	167 grams
Colors	Carmine Red, New Aurora Black, New Platinum Gray