Apple Reportedly Reduced Face ID Accuracy to Speed Up iPhone X Production

[Fernandez21]

Ok, well I've never said this before, but this is something that Steve Jobs would have never allowed. I guess we'll see what kind of effect this has.

 

[applezulu]

Seems like, in addition to the article Macrumors posted later, featuring Apple's assertion that the Bloomberg claims about compromises in Face ID are completely false, Macrumors should also update the article at the top of this thread to note that Apple has disputed that claim. Otherwise, this thread just sits out here undisputed and uncorrected.

 

[mabhatter]

As I said in another thread, it sounds strange that Apple order was to "reduce FaceID accuracy", since, production-wise, there is no such a thing as "FaceID", but there are many components that contribute to it.
What they probably did was to change the accuracy requirements for one or more of the sensors involved in the technology. We don't know how this will affect the final system. As far as we know, an improvement in the machine learning software could compensate for the less precise sensors...

I think your on to something. In that Apple may not be getting the dot projector quality they want. But they designed the system to use different patterns of dots each time a face is scanned. So maybe they just downscale from 30,000 possible dots to 20,000 and adjust the patterns. The patterns and scans are unique to your iphone’s Combination of sensors and security key, so it’s not like the system isn’t pretty well encrypted if they end up only using 2/3 the capability of one part because a hacker can’t exploit that hardware because it’s all in sync and doesn’t work at all if changed.

 

[VulchR]

Like I said, there is a potential issue of false negatives regarding FaceID. One of the first reports of the iPhone X in the wild comes from Steven Levy of Wired (link):

I have thrust my phone into several people’s faces—though considerably fewer than the million punims that Apple says I’d have to try before a false positive—and it has not fallen for any of them. I even offered up my own head shot to the camera: no go. How it has dealt with my own real-life face is another matter. There have been times when, despite a clear view of my face, the iPhone X has ghosted me. (Apple tells me that perhaps I wasn’t making what the iPhone X considers eye contact. I wouldn’t want it to turn on every time my face was within camera range, would I?)​

Eventually he got it to work most of the time, but had to develop a 'strategy' to do so. So, yeah, it seems like I wasn't so far off the mark after all.

What we need to see is whether in the hands of real users (particularly ones with glasses) FaceID works well enough not to be a gimmick. FaceID is trying to solve problems that border on the unsolvable. My hat goes off to Apple if they have managed to solve these problems well enough to make FaceID reliable. But if not, then the issue isn't engineering, it is the insanely difficult nature of the computational problems that Apple is trying to solve on a smart phone.

 

[spacemnspiff]

? Nope, I make speakers, not phones. But only the Pixel 2 has a lower screen/body ratio from the current crop of "Bezel-less" flagships.

Apple iPhone X 81.49%
LG V30 83.24%
Samsung S8 83.6%
Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 82.63%

That's less than 3% difference, which is in the noise. Humans trying detecting 3% difference is an futile attempt to detect the benefits if slightly larger screen.

Back to the original question which you conveniently deflected, I assume your speakers/drivers have no bezels for the enclosure, or better yet, no enclosure at all, pure speaker experience.

 

[Parkin Pig]

It really doesn't matter whether Face ID works properly or not. There's a myriad people queueing up to jump to Apple's defence, and pre-orders are through the roof.
So many people want to be the first to own new tech, whatever undeveloped stage it's at.
Why would any shareholder-based company waste money on an army of in-house product testers when the public will actually buy the beta product and test it for free?
Smartphones have become an obsession. People will buy them whatever. Exploding batteries didn't stop people from buying Samsung, so a minor flaw like a slightly dysfunctional first-attempt at facial recognition will result in people venting their spleen on the web, then they'll get over it and buy next year's model with Face ID II - ker-ching!

 

[AnthonyG6]

This is now a ‘moot point’ as the Face ID on my iPhone X works seamlessly.