All of you who have seen the Apple iPhone launch event either in person or on the live stream might have noticed that Apple senior vice president of software, Craig Federighi struggling for a second for unlocking the iPhone X using Face ID during the presentation.
This happened when Federighi was giving the explanation on how the Face ID works. As soon as he looked at the phone to unlock it, the phone, instead, on unlocking, showed passcode barrier on the screen forcing him to switch to the backup iPhone X kept on the table.
It clearly seemed that the phone’s facial recognition system could not recognize Federighi’s face, which can be concerning as the company has completely removed the tried and tested TouchID. The Face ID scans the face of the owner in three-dimensions to unlock the phone. But, the company claimed that this is not an issue and that way too many people were messing around with the device backstage before the presentation that led to the inconvenience.
The small incident has been circulated on the internet widely, and the company has been reportedly giving the explanation as to why the Face ID failed to recognize Federighi’s face during the presentation.
An Apple consultant explained on Quora that the device’s Face ID has the same ‘Secure Encalve’ mechanism. The mechanism allows the device to store the numeric representation of Face ID same as TouchID. When the users use the fingerprint scanner to unlock their device, their fingerprint is scanned with the saved numeric data and when the data is matched the device is unlocked.
While the news has come as a shock to the potential buyers, it remains a sign for those who already feared that the Face ID will not be able to live up to TouchID. The Apple’s explanation on the matter is smart, it is for us to wait until the device starts rolling out. It is when we would know that the incident was an accident or is going to be a common issue.