Apple’s upcoming 1oth anniversary edition of iPhone dubbed as ‘iPhone 8’ is expected to introduce deep sensing 3D sensor on the front and back for facial scanning within “millionths of a second”. The Wall Street Journal now reports that this new deep sensing 3D scanner works in low-light conditions, even in complete darkness.
WSJ reports that unlocking the smart devices using our faces is going to become a thing of routine life as Apple is going to mainstream advanced 3D facial scanning by introducing it in upcoming iPhone 8. It’s gonna be as successful as the sophisticated Touch ID fingerprint sensor is, says the journal.
Rather than analyzing 2D images through the front-facing camera, as found on the Galaxy s8, the iPhone 8 will reportedly use a dedicated sensor based on so-called “structured light.” An infrared transmitter will through thousands of tiny spots on the face or the object and an infrared receiver receive the bouncing light. Based on the calculated time the light took to travel back, the iPhone 8 will be able to work out the distance between the camera and the scanned object. The result of this calculation will be a 3D mesh object in real-time.
Depth-sensing technology, known as structured light, sprays a point cloud of infrared dots on an object or face. By reading distortions in this field of dots, the camera gathers super-accurate depth information. Since the phone’s camera can see infrared but humans can’t, such a system could allow the phone to unlock in complete darkness.
The Journal’s report is in line with a recent report from Mark Gurman of the Bloomberg who said that iPhone 8’s facial scanner would use more detection points than the Touch ID fingerprint scanner making the upcoming tech more reliable and secure than the current fingerprint scanner.
With the creation of a 3D mesh, a 3D-printed mask won’t be able to fool iPhone8’s facial scanning system, however, an identical twin, wearing something that covers the face or the sunglasses on your face might.
Apple is widely expected to use Qualcomm’s recently unveiled Spectra imaging system. This new system extracts the depth information from objects including faces. The 3D sensor on iPhone 8 can even work at odd angles, for instance, when the device is laying flat on the table. This tech is reportedly so secure that Apple even plans to use it to authorize Apple Pay payments.
If the report is a reality, Apple is indeed replacing on killing the Touch ID altogether, as said by Bloomberg’s sources.