ZTE Grand S3 can be unlocked with an eye scan

BARCELONA - ZTE doesn't have an entirely new flagship at this year's Mobile World Congress, but the company added an interesting feature to its existing top smartphone, the ZTE Grand S3 — eye-based biometric authentication. 

The solution ZTE is using is not new, either — it's actually EyeVerify's EyePrint ID, and it's not an iris scan. Instead, the EyePrint ID uses the device's camera to map the blood vessels in the whites of your eye, which, the company claims, is unique to every person, and doesn't change with age or stress.

For the user, the process should be fairly simple: Hold the phone up and look at it to unlock it — no password required. The setting up process, which was demoed to us by ZTE, involves looking at the phone's camera and following a green line moving up and down. It lasts about a minute, and it worked for us on the first try. 

Those following the smartphone industry closely may remember that a similar feature was widely rumored to debut in Samsung's Galaxy S5, but it didn't happen — Samsung relied on fingerprint-scanning security instead. 

Now, ZTE claims the Grand S3 is "one of the first smartphones in the world" to offer this solution. The company also plans to include the eye-scanning feature in future Grand series phones, as well as integrate it with mobile payment solutions and other apps. 

Though the process of unlocking the phone with your eye is pretty simple, it's even easier to do it with a fingerprint. We spoke to Kan Yulun, ZTE's CEO of mobile for the EMEA and LATAM regions, and he told us the main advantage of eye-scanning tech is security. "It's possible to defeat fingerprint scanning, but the technology we use is much more secure, as it takes a video of your eyes, and turns into a detailed map. This cannot be replicated by using someone's photo," he said. 

As for the rest of the Grand S3, it's a pretty powerful Android 4.4 device but little known outside of China, where it launched on Jan. 17, 2015. It sports a 5.5-inch, full HD screen, a 2.5GHz quad-core processor, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of memory (expandable with microSD cards) 16-megapixel back camera coupled with an 8-megapixel one on the front, and a 3,100mAh battery. 

ZTE Grand S3 has a 16-megapixel camera on the back, but the eye scanning is done with the 8-megapixel one on the front. 

IMAGE: ZTE

ZTE Grand S3 with Eyeprint ID is currently available for purchase in China, priced at 2999 yuan ($479); it will be coming to the U.S. in 2015, but probably no sooner than Q4. 

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