16-Inch MacBook Pro Features New 'Lid Angle Sensor'

[PickUrPoison]

How did iFixit miss that sensor?

Possibilities:

• They don’t sell parts or tool kits to fix it, so they have no interest;
• it isn’t soldered so they can’t bitch about it’s non-repairability;
• their video hosts don’t know all that much about electronics and/or their brain didn’t register what their eyes were seeing;
• they rushed the disassembly because they were in too much of a hurry to be first;
• they saw it but whoever comes up with their oh-so-clever and downright side-splittingly hilarious Apple-snark just had too long of a day and came up dry. So they just said, eff it, whatever, it’s probably just some electronic part ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Tech198]

Apple defiantly picks up on this marketing.

 

[jonnysods]

My 'early 2019 model' still sucks on battery life like crazy when the lid is shut - so annoying.

 

[IIGS User]

Yay!

Something else to break just after the warranty expires and have the "well, you didn't buy AppleCare" Kool-Aid shoved down your throat...

 

[Shaggymax]

Quite possibly the most fascinating tidbit of the week...when to start and stop Facetime spy camera?

 

[MrGuder]

I have a 2017 MBP 15” and it drains battery like crazy with the lid closed (I don’t ever power down laptop) maybe this clip will help battery when lid is closed.

 

[ASentientBot]

This is probably the "pervert privacy protection" feature. If it senses the lid closing super rapidly, it closes all browser windows and scrubs the hard drive of all your porn.

You can bet that somebody will figure out how to read the sensor value in software, so what's to stop us from implementing just that? Angle changes more than a certain amount in a certain time frame? Kill Safari. I'd install it.
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https://ams.com/documents/20143/36005/AS5270_DS000525_2-00.pdf/74c1bd8d-735d-dd59-4a78-ae27dd75a012

It would be interesting to know if they removed the hall effect sensor and detect the lid open/close solely on the lid angle sensor.

Interestingly, that PDF mentions redundancy with two stacked chips, so that a failure in either one won't break the entire system. This is pretty uncommon; do you know if these sensors are unusually failure-prone or fragile? It also looks like there is a flex cable which might get bent repeatedly.

I can see this becoming a huge annoyance if some MacBooks start to sleep/wake unreliably over the next couple years. The previous sensor seemed extremely robust, so hopefully this one is too.

 

[diego.caraballo]

Interestingly, that PDF mentions redundancy with two stacked chips, so that a failure in either one won't break the entire system. This is pretty uncommon; do you know if these sensors are unusually failure-prone or fragile? It also looks like there is a flex cable which might get bent repeatedly.

The photo of the sensor in the iFixit teardown is not clear enough to see the part number. I don't think that this kind of sensors are failure-prone. It's a hall sensor array after all. I think that in this particular part number the redundancy is added for the use in automotive applications (brake and gas pedals are mentioned, where a failure would be critical). Probably Apple is using a sensor with only one chip, that also would be cheap.

 

[thisrocks]

My 2015 MBP has a magnetic sensor on the left side. My TI2 pen has magnets to hold the cap on. One day I placed my pen next to my laptop and the screen shut off because the magnet caused it to think the lid was closed.

My coworker has a 2018 MBP that does not respond to the pen. However, when he disconnects from his external monitors with his laptop screen up, his computer will completely lockup, as if it thinks the lid is closed. Opening it and closing it has no effect, and the trackpad goes completely dead (no haptic - just like my laptop when the pen is placed beside it).

My theory: I know other people with the same issue when disconnecting from hubs/docks. I guarantee more than a few have gone to the Genius Bar about this issue. This sensor is so the machine knows if the display is actually closed or not so it does not lock up for those and similarly-affected users.

yeah when I stick my iPhone to the left of my trackpad on my 2012 rMBP I frequently get screen shut offs so it’s cool to understand why!

Additionally when I was testing out the thing in an Apple store last week I noticed that the keyboard backlight wouldn’t turn on but on another one it would and then I moved the screen back and forth and noticed that it would only enable at or after a certain screen angle. The assistant that I asked about it said that the O/S “demo software” they had could frequently be buggy at product launch and didn’t suspect this would be an issue with a retail device and Catalina, which he could be very right about but I suspect this sensor now had a lot to do with that.