The LG G8 smartphone takes palm readings to the next level

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Biometric methods for unlocking your phone have been around for ages now, with fingerprints, faceprints or iris-scans being almost standard equipment nowadays. Now you can add another method to that list – the palm of your hand. LG’s new “Hand ID” scans for the veins in the palm of your hand, letting you unlock your phone with a high-five without having to lift it from the table.

The simple-seeming unlock needs a whole bunch of tech to make it work. The LG G8 has what LG calls a “Z camera” which paints the users’ palm with infrared light to detect the veins. There’s also a time-of-flight camera to detect the shape, thickness and other characteristics of the palm.

Thanks to Business Insider, we have some footage of the feature in action. The gesture to trigger it is almost Jedi-like, needing a user to hold their palm flat over the phone, then raise it slowly until the phone triggers the unlock. It looks fairly quick, although not as quick as fingerprint scanners or things like Face ID, but not slow enough to get annoying.

The LG G8 also has a fingerprint sensor on the back, and face recognition tech. That’s a lot of options to add security to your phone with, and more options for security can’t be a bad thing. Unless, yanno, you don’t use any of them.

While biometric security might be the primary use of the Z camera, that’s not all LG has designed it to do. You can open apps, pause or play music, and even adjust the volume using wizard-like gestures, further blurring the lines between magic and advanced technology.

LG seems to have learned from its mistakes with earlier handsets in the G-series. No longer are they using last year’s internals, with the up-to-date Snapdragon 855 powering the G8, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. They’re also one of the only companies to keep both a microSD slot and the headphone jack, which should please some consumers.

If anyone wants me, I’ll be practicing for my Wizarding exams.

What do you think? Is this unlocking method practical? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Nokia decided that its PureView smartphone needed five cameras on the back
• Sprint plans to have its 5G network up and running by May 2019
• T-Mobile has delayed its 5G coverage to the second half of 2019
• Huawei’s Mate X foldable phone runs $2,600 and looks better than the Samsung Fold
• Thankfully, you can now map the Samsung Bixby button to do things that are actually helpful

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.