Analyst: Under-screen Face ID unlikely to launch until iPhone 16 at the
earliest
José Adorno
A report by The Elec from early today claims Apple will introduce an
under-display Face ID sensor on the iPhone 15 Pro in 2023. DSCC analyst Ross
Young, who has a great record of Apple leaks over the past months,
contradicts the report and says the technology could land on iPhone 16 at
the earliest.
Rumors about under-screen Face ID have been surfacing the web for a while.
For the iPhone 14 Pro, for example, Apple will be able to add some sensors
under
the display and change the notch to a hole punch + pill cutout.
Then, for iPhone 15 lineup, The Elec reported that Apple would use Samsung
technology to hide the Face ID sensor under the display in the next iPhone:
Samsung Display was currently developing a new under panel camera technology
for its customer Apple to hide the Face ID under the display in the next
iPhone,
TheElec has learned.
Samsung Displays technology is expected to apply first to Samsung
Electronics foldable phones launching next year, followed by application to
the Pro
lineup on the iPhone 15 series, sources said.
DSCCs roadmap for the future iPhones, on the other hand, shows that Apple
would offer a different take for the iPhone 15 series by expanding the hole
punch + pill cutout to all models, while the 2024 iPhone 16 could finally
see under-display Face ID technology for the first time.
Heres what DSCC Ross Young wrote on Twitter:
We reconfirmed again that there is not expected to be under panel IR for
iPhones until 2024, iPhone 16. Gotta start the development and start
submitting
samples now though.
That said, although tests should start as early as 2022, dont expect
under-display facial recognition to land on iPhone before 2024.
Under-display Face ID will debut in iPhone 15 Pro, claims report
Ben Lovejoy
A report today claims that Apple will introduce under-display
Face ID
on the
iPhone 15
Pro next year, and that it will use technology developed by
Samsung.
It is expected that the Cupertino company will continue working toward a
vision of the iPhone as a single slab of glass, with an all-display front.
Hiding
biometric authentication beneath the screen will be part of that journey for
sure the question, however, is how and when
Apples former design chief Jony Ive talked of the single slab of glass
goal, referencing it at the launch of the iPhone X. Although the marketing
spin was that this model finally achieved it, the reality was of course
that it still fell considerably short.
There are a number of ways Apple could incorporate biometric authentication
into an iPhone with an all-display front. The simplest would be the approach
introduced with the 4th-gen iPad Air: Touch ID on the power button. However,
this would be clunky on an iPhone with its raise to wake feature, and some
iPad users reported accidentally switching off the device
when trying to authenticate.
A far more likely approach is to embed either Touch ID or Face ID beneath
the display.
Apple has patents for both approaches, but there are a bunch of technical
challenges to be solved to make either work.
Two notable Apple analysts, Ming-Chi Kuo and Ross Young, have both suggested
that under-display Face ID will be introduced in either 2023 or 2024, with
the former saying the company was aiming for 2023.
Latest under-display Face ID report
Todays report in The Elec gets a lot more specific than previous ones.
Specifically, it says that the feature will be exclusive to the iPhone 15
Pro models, and that it will use a new form of Samsung tech that will first
be seen in the Korean companys own smartphones.
Samsung initially used a far inferior form of facial recognition that was
easily defeated by photos and video, though it has introduced
much more secure iris recognition on some models. It is now working on
next-gen facial recognition tech that can be embedded into displays.
Samsung Display was collaborating with Canadas OTI Lumionics for its new
under panel camera technology, which will include a metal patterning layer
that
uses cathode mask materials.
In OLED panels, the light emitted from the emission layer at the bottom goes
through the cathode at the top __ this is called top emission.
The cathode needs to be transparent for under panel camera technology to
work. The cathode is patterned so that it can be transparent while being
able
to absorb light from the outside at the same time.
OTI Lumionics has its own technology that can use fine metal masks to
deposit cathode patterning materials. An open metal mask is then used to
deposit
the cathode that avoids being deposited on the patterning material.
Mg-Ag cathode material is deposited on the empty space where there is no
cathode patterning materials.
9to5Macs Take
Under-display biometric authentication on iPhones has always been a question
of when rather than if.
Prior to the pandemic, it seemed clear that Face ID was Apples preferred
approach, with Touch ID an interim solution for Mac (where the lid isnt
thick enough to incorporate current TrueDepth components) and lower-end
devices. Mask-wearing challenged this, though Apple has since figured out
how to make Face ID work with masks.
What seems unlikely is that Apple would do anything to compromise the
security of Face ID by using inferior face-recognition tech especially as
it is used for Apple Pay too. A move to under-display Face ID would require
technology that is roughly on a par with the existing TrueDepth system.
Todays report
doesnt provide enough information to assess the likelihood of this, but it
does appear that we are nearing the point at which this will be possible
and the idea of it initially being exclusive to Pro models is certainly
credible.
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