Talks regarding touch ID on the iPhone 8 have been going a lot over the past few days, as the rumors have started to heat up. While it was initially believed and the rumors claimed that the touch ID would be inserted beneath the display itself, it has now come to light that the Apple was unable to achieve this and that the touch ID might be replaced by Face ID all-together. This move would certainly divide opinions – if it actually does take place!
Talking about the facial recognition technology, in light of the HomePod firmware that was released by Apple last week, we have learned quite a bit about the technology that we will be seeing next in the iPhone 8. Code discovered last weekend highlighted support for infra-red face unlocks in BiometricKit, which is the framework currently responsible for Touch ID. The infra-red mention is notable because infra-red will allow the Face ID technology to recognize partially occluded face and faces from various angles, such as when the device is laying flat.
Furthermore, it has also been suggested by code that the Face ID will be supported in third-party applications, just like the touch ID is now. And it is almost certain that the Face ID will also be compatible enough to work with Apple Pay.
It also may be that the Face ID adds another layer of technology. A feature which we might see next is “Auto-lock”. With this feature, in particular, the iPhone may automatically be locked if there is an unregistered face to be detected. This would especially be useful for sensitive applications – such as the likes of Password managers, and banking/financing apps.
It is true that without the touch ID, some users might not be all that convinced with the iPhone 8, but consider this: with Apple spending so much time on touch ID, investing in so much to make it perfect, would the company really abandon something like that if there wasn’t something more, or equally impressive on the horizon?
