Apple’s Face ID system on the newest iPhone works pretty well. It’s fast and reliable, making it a solid replacement for Touch ID. Face ID still, however, isn’t always perfect and can be inconvenient at times.
That might finally be addressed by Apple…in 2021. Yeah, that’s very late.
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Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has published a new report outlining Apple’s plans of potentially placing an in-display fingerprint scanner on the iPhone in 2021. Some technical hardware design issues are preventing the firm from putting in-display fingers in the current iPhones, according to Kuo.
More specifically, 9to5Mac reports that Apple is unable to put in-display fingers on the current iPhones or the upcoming 2019 iPhones because of issues surrounding power consumption, size of the sensing area, the thickness of the sensing module, and the production yield rate of the lamination process. That’s a whole lot of different problems Apple will reportedly try to address in 2020, allowing the 2021 iPhones to ship with in-display fingerprint scanners.
Apple will continue to offer Face ID along with Touch ID because the Face ID sensors are used to power other features like Animoji. The company will reportedly use a variation of Qualcomm’s ultrasonic fingerprint-under-display-system for the in-display fingerprint scanner.
It will interesting to see if the introduction of Touch ID along with Face ID results in Apple charging more for the iPhone. The current line of iPhones are already very expensive, and further hikes could make it a difficult purchase for many.
BrianEricFord
<p>I’ll believe it when I see it.</p>
skane2600
<p>This has always seemed to me to be a meaningless tech achievement. How will the user experience be improved over having a fingerprint scanner on the back? It seems meaningful innovation in smartphones is a thing of the past.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#447491">In reply to evox81:</a></em></blockquote><p>We all have potentially different preferences but I don't see this issue as tech enthusiast vs. non-technical folks. I might be the laziest person on this site, but I'm not challenged by having to pick up a phone to unlock it or feeling around for a fingerprint scanner. Sounds like a zeroth world problem to me, but to each their own.</p>
skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#447432">In reply to SvenJ:</a></em></blockquote><p>So Apple could secretly use Face ID to open and pretend there's a fingerprint sensor and nobody would know the difference?</p>
dontbeevil
<p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">“but but faceid is so much better” … in-screen fingerprint, apple playing catch up as usual again</span></p>