Awkward problem with Samsung Galaxy 8

Samsung's effort to regain consumer confidence and trust in the safety of its products has hit a slight snag.

After launching its new flagship smartphone in New York last week - the Galaxy S8 - users lucky enough to get their hands on the device have found a slight problem with its facial recognition security feature.

The feature allows users to unlock the phone by letting the front camera scan their face, but the system can be tricked into opening up by simply using a photograph of its owner for the camera to scan.

A YouTube channel named iDeviceHelp tested the feature - one of many to enable users to unlock the phone - but found it was far from secure.

By holding up a second phone depicting a selfie photo of his face on the screen, the user was able to quickly trick the device into unlocking itself.

Following the launch last week Samsung described its suite of security options as "foolproof".

Compared to the exploding battery issue of its last high profile phone launch, this bug pales in comparison. And given the fact that it's still a few weeks until the phone hits stores, Samsung could potentially upgrade the phone's software to fix the fault by then. But it's far from ideal for the tech giant which put safety and consumer trust at the centre of its marketing campaign for the new device.

The South Korean phone maker issued a statement explaining that the feature was designed to be "a convenient action to open your phone, similar to the swipe-to-unlock action," but not as secure as its other methods.

"We offer the highest level of biometric authentication - fingerprint and iris - to lock your phone and authenticate access to Samsung Pay or Secure Folder," the company said.

The Galaxy S8 is due to be released in Australia on April 28 for $1199 and $1349 for the larger 'plus' version.

A major new feature of the phone is the artificially intelligent voice assistant dubbed Bixby - effectively the company's answer to the iPhone's Siri.

However while phones released in the US market later this month will come with the functional AI assistant, other markets including Australia don't yet have a release date for the Bixby assistant.