I don't see anywhere in the Bloomberg article (or anywhere else) which specifications were relaxed, or by how much.
It *does* say that the relaxed specs led to faster testing of completed modules.
As an example of the sort of specification we might be talking about:
If this were a screen, instead of a dot projector, there would a "maximum dead pixels" spec. That spec might be zero, or it might be 10,000. Raising it from, say, 5 to 10 would "relax" the spec and improve yields. If it's a sufficiently high-res display viewed from far enough back, these small numbers of individual dead pixels might not actually be noticeable.
If we translate this to the dot projector, we know it has 30,000 dots. We also know that Face ID works even if you change some things (hairstyle, makeup, hat, etc), so we know that it does not need all 30,000 dots to correctly recognize a face.
So one spec they could have relaxed might be the number of active dots.
I would guess Apple's original spec was "zero inactive dots". They could easily raise this to 20 or more without having a noticeable impact on the function of the product.
Another possibility is simply the thoroughness of testing for defects. They may have originally required multiple checks to pass certain test, and now they are only requiring one (or some other number which is smaller than the original).
I think the Bloomberg article sensationalizes something that probably isn't a big deal.
I also don't think they're lying, or that Apple is.
"Apple relaxed the specs" and "Face ID is just as accurate as we said it is" are not incompatible statements.
You can relax the manufacturing specs without relaxing the functional requirements.
