After Bloomberg alleged that Apple had allowed its suppliers to make Face ID less accurate to speed up production of the iPhone X, the company has now stated that this claim is “completely false” in a statement that they shared with TechCrunch.
Apple state that the quality and accuracy of Face ID has not changed and rather that it will be the new “gold standard” for authentication:
Customer excitement for iPhone X and Face ID has been incredible, and we can’t wait for customers to get their hands on it starting Friday, November 3. Face ID is a powerful and secure authentication system that’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use. The quality and accuracy of Face ID haven’t changed. It continues to be 1 in a million probability of a random person unlocking your iPhone with Face ID.
Bloomberg’s claim that Apple has reduced the accuracy spec for Face ID is completely false and we expect Face ID to be the new gold standard for facial authentication.
Bloomberg’s report went into further detail about the components used in the TrueDepth camera and suggested that Apple had “relaxed some of the specifications for Face ID” to boost the number of usable dot projectors which is a component that Apple suppliers were apparently struggling with. The report says:
It’s not clear how much the new specs will reduce the technology’s efficacy. At the phone’s official unveiling in September, executives boasted that there was a one in a million chance that an interloper could defeat Face ID to unlock a phone. Even downgraded, it will probably still be far more accurate than Touch ID, where the odds of someone other than the owner of a phone being able to unlock it are one in 50,000.
To back up their statement, Apple has shared specific numbers and details on the company’s newest feature, showing that it would be difficult to change production to alter the way that Face ID works.
It’s true that Apple struggled with some of the components needed to make the iPhone X and this has resulted in an extremely limited amount available at launch with the company unlikely to reach a balance between supply and demand until 2018.
