iPhone X Face ID now slightly less accurate because Apple wants to speed up production: Report
iPhone X is coming on November 3. But ahead of its global and India launch, Apple is still struggling to sort out the production issues that inevitably come with manufacturing of such a high-end gadget. Earlier an analyst said that that Apple will be able to ship out only 20 million units of the iPhone X this quarter instead of planned 40 million. Now a report hints that Apple is agreeing to lower the sensitivity of the Face ID, which is the key feature of the iPhone X, to speed up the production process because apparently getting the Face ID perfect is the primary reason that is clogging the supply chains at factories making the iPhone X.
The new comes just days before the iPhone X goes on pre-order in India from October 27. The phone has a starting price of Rs 89,000 although various retailers, including on Flipkart and Amazon where it is expected to be on sale, will probably make introductory offer to consumers.
The Bloomberg in a report, citing unnamed sources, says that Apple has told its iPhone X component suppliers that it will tolerate slightly more inaccuracies compared to usual in the Face ID system if that helps them churn out more iPhone X units. For the Face ID Apple use three major components: a dot projector, flood illuminator and infrared camera. Of these, Apple and its suppliers are having the real hard time with the dot projector.
"To boost the number of usable dot projectors and accelerate production, Apple relaxed some of the specifications for Face ID, according to a different person with knowledge of the process," notes the Bloomberg report. "It's not clear how much the new specs will reduce the technology's efficacy."
While launching the iPhone X Apple had said that the Face ID was the most accurate ID -- twice as accurate than the Touch ID -- that it tested. So despite relaxed guidelines for suppliers from Apple, it is possible that in the real-world use the iPhone X users may not notice anything amiss.
The demand for the iPhone X, which is the anniversary edition of the iPhone and one of the biggest redesigns in the last five years, is supposedly high. But technologies like Face ID that use cutting-edge and very sensitive components mean that Apple's hardware and manufacturing partners are finding it difficult to make perfect iPhone X fast enough. It sounds plausible that Apple is facing trouble with the FaceID, which not only uses regular camera and lasers but also TrueDepth camera.
In a recent paper, Apple described how the FaceID works and whole thing sounds almost magical. Apple wrote:
With a simple glance, Face ID securely unlocksiPhone X. It provides intuitive and secure authentication enabled by the TrueDepth camera system, which uses advanced technologies to accurately map the geometry of your face. Face ID confirms attention by detecting the direction of your gaze, then uses neural networks for matching and anti-spoofing so you can unlock your phone with a glance. Face ID automatically adapts to changes in your appearance, and carefully safeguards the privacy and security of your biometric data.
Earlier Apple had demonstrated that it not only plans to use the FaceID to unlock the phone but also for offering features like animated emojis that users will be able to create on the fly using their facial gestures by looking into the selfie camera of the iPhone X.
Incidentally, Apple is not the only company having problems with the phone components. In the recent days we have seen that Google, which launched the iPhone competitor Pixel phones a few weeks ago, was fighting its own hardware fires. The Pixel 2 XL, which goes on sale in India on November 3 is under shadows because of the reported problems with its OLED screens. Usually OLED screens in high-end phones have come from Samsung but in the Pixel 2 XL the display is supplied by LG and some people who have used the Pixel 2 XL for now have reported muted colour, blue tints and screen burn-in issues with the device.
Apple's iPhone X too uses an OLED panel -- it's a first for an iPhone -- but this panel is supplied by Samsung, which seems to have mastered the art of making OLED panels that the company also uses in its own Galaxy S and the Galaxy Note phones.
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