Jelly Bean wants to make sure you’re alive

Talking about the new Jelly Bean operating system for Android, that is. No actual jelly bean cares if you’re alive; they’re candy. Google has been offering a “face unlock” feature for a while now where you can set your phone to unlock only if it recognizes you. But couldn’t I steal someone’s phone and then hold up a picture of that person? Well, yeah, maybe, but the new version of Android’s OS will require that you blink, thus proving you’re a real person standing there and not some photo. Neat!

From Gizmodo:

So in Android 4.1 it ought to be a little tougher to fool thanks to the optional blink detection setting, unless you print out a life-sized photo of the owner, cut out holes for the eyes and blink through the holes. Which is probably a bit too much fuss for the chance to read someone else’s mundane SMS messages.