Yes, everyone's favorite supply chain exfiltrator has just released a new report, not about this year's iPhone. Not even about next year's iPhone. But about the year after that's iPhone. iPhone 2021. Or, the iPhone some of us will be taking to go watch Thor: Love and Thunder at the end of Marvel Phase 4.
Us: It is beyond absurdly ridiculous to be getting iPhone 12 rumors when Apple hadn't even announced iPhone 11 yet. 🤷♂️
Kuo Ming-Chi: Hold my iPhone 13. 🍺
Now, Kuo's reports are usually based on the actual production information he manages to broker out of the plants in China, which is why it's often uncannily accurate.
This iPhone 13 rumor, though, seems less like that and more like supposition based on patents and component road maps. Which is fine, just different, and it's important to recognize the distinction when weighing the rumors.
So, what Kuo is rumoring this time is what Barclay's rumored last time — that Touch ID will come back to the iPhone. Kuo just thinks it won't be in the iPhone 12 in 2020 but the iPhone 13 in 2021.
Namely, fingerprint on display, or FOD, which is the fancy term, and specifically, the Qualcomm type which uses ultrasonic technology rather than optical.
Touch ID as we know it today, as it still ships on a variety of Apple devices from the iPhone 8 to iPad Air to MacBook Pro, uses a capacitive ring to trigger and optical reader. And it's — what's more solid than rock? — iron ore solid.
The first few generations of under-display — sorry, on display! — fingerprint readers have been more like…. I don't know… sponge solid? Smoke solid?
But that's rapidly changing, according to Kuo, via MacRumors:
In terms of technology, we predict that four critical technical issues of FOD will significantly improve in 12–18 months, including module thickness, sensing area, power consumption, and lamination yield rate. Therefore, we believe that Apple will launch the new iPhone equipped with both Face ID and FOD to enhance security and convenience thanks to the multi-biometrics.
Now, as anyone who's been following my work for a while knows, we've been talking about this right here for years.
Long term, it's best not to think about things like Face ID or Touch ID. That is, they won't be discreet systems but part of a largely biometric system. A Me ID, so to speak.
Touch ID, Face ID, Voice ID, Motion ID, all of these systems will just work together so that every contact, every glimpse, every word, every step, is taken as part of a threshold of trust, and when your device is certain it's you, it's just unlocked. No overt action required. And when it's not, it prompts you, and you authenticate using whatever is most convenient at the moment.
So, to me, this is really less about Kuo making iPhone 13 predictions and more about him joining us on this ride to the future of biometrics.
But let me know what you think, and how much you want Touch ID back, in the comments below.
