This paper presents a speed-optimized face recognition system designed for mobile devices. Such applications may be used in the context of pervasive and assistive computing for the support of elderly suffering from dementia in recognizing persons or for the development of cognitive memory games Eigenfaces decomposition and Mahalanobis distance calculation have been utilized whereas the recognition application has been developed for Android OS. The initial implementation and the corresponding results have proven the feasibility and value of the proposed system.