There are a handful of utilities for Android that will let you password-protect an app so that your kids won’t ruin your game scores or read or watch anything they shouldn’t see on your phone or tablet. But if you want to save the few seconds it takes to enter a password — and avoid having someone figure out that your password is just your birthday — Visidon AppLock takes a different approach.
The free app uses facial recognition to unlock apps. Just train the app to recognize your mugshot with your device’s front-facing camera and then choose the apps you want to lock from a list.
Next time you try to launch a locked app, Visidon will scan your face to see whether it should unlock the app. I took the app for a test drive and it recognized my face in a matter of seconds, and when I held up a picture of someone else’s face, the app refused to launch the protected app.
The app also did a surprisingly good job of recognizing my face in a pretty dark room — but clearly facial recognition is going to be a problem if you try using the app in a pitch black room. For that reason, Visidon recommends entering a password which you can use to override the app.
Of course, anyone trying to gain access to your apps can simply uninstall Visidon — but you can avoid this by locking the Android Market, Visidon app, and the Android Settings menu and then setting Visidon AppLock to start when you boot your device. I wouldn’t recommend doing that until you’ve thoroughly tested the free app for yourself though.
via Talk Android
