$GTCH Many mobile devices such as smartphones include a facial identification (ID) recognition system that learns the user’s facial features and unlocks the phone upon its user’s face image. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in most public places a face cover or facemask is required. However, the presence of a face cover or mask interrupts the face recognition unlocking feature on most mobile devices. Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that can learn and recognize a partially covered human face and method that can unlock a mobile device based on recognition of a partially covered human face.