Apple announced its iPhone X with much fanfare on September 12. The phone features Apple’s facial recognition system known as Face ID. While the phone’s Face ID feature was being demonstrated during the live launch event, it failed to unlock the device. Apple has made a statement to Yahoo explaining what exactly happened during the live event.
The Face ID feature, which is meant to replace the previously used Touch ID function on the iPhone X, was demonstrated by Apple’s VP for Software Engineering Craig Federighi. Federighi struggled to unlock the iPhone X while demonstrating Face ID as it didn’t work properly at first attempt. It forced Federighi to use his passcode to unlock the device. Later, Federighi was able to unlock a replacement device just by glancing at the device.
Apple explained the reason for Face ID’s failure saying that “too many people were handling the device for the ‘stage demo’ ahead of the actual launch and there’s nothing wrong with Face ID.” An Apple representative says that the feature, in fact, performed exactly as it was supposed to.
“People were handling the device for stage demo ahead of time,” said the rep, “and didn’t realize Face ID was trying to authenticate their face. After failing a number of times, because they weren’t Craig, the iPhone did what it was designed to do, which was to require his passcode,” Apple further explained to Yahoo.
Apple’s latest flagship smartphone, the iPhone X is powered by an A11 Bionic processor which features a neural engine required for utilising AR, Face ID and more. Apple claims that its Face ID feature gets better each time as it scans a user’s face for unlocking the iPhone. The iPhone X features a “true depth camera system” and incorporates an infrared camera along with a dot projector that projects 30,000 invisible Infrared dots to create a 3D model of the face. A flood illuminator allows the Face ID to work in the dark as well.