We know from previous Apple patents that the company is hard at work figuring out ways of embedding Face ID in the display of future iPhones.
The biggest barrier here is that the infrared light needed for Face ID doesn’t travel well through a display – but a newly-granted Apple patent suggests that the company may have figured out a solution …
Embedding Face ID in the display
Former Apple design chief Jony Ive had long seen the holy grail of iPhone design to be “a single slab of glass.” From the front, you would see no bezels, no notch or cutout, just uninterrupted display. Ive may be long gone, but the company is believed to be still working toward that vision.
That would require eventually embedding everything in the Dynamic Island beneath the display, including both the front-facing camera and Face ID tech.
The camera is a longer-term goal. While it’s technically possible today, the quality it permits is nowhere close to acceptable for an iPhone. For that reason, it’s a near-certainty that embedding Face ID in the display will happen first.
Solving the biggest problem
While it’s possible for infrared light to travel through displays, IR transmission is extremely poor, which would make face-recognition much slower and less reliable than it is now.
Apple has previously toyed with selectively deactivating certain pixels in order to improve transmission, but a patent granted yesterday (spotted by Patently Apple) describes a simpler and more reliable approach: removing some subpixels.
A pixel comprises separate light emitters for red, green, and blue. These emitters are known as subpixels, and mixing them in different ways at different levels is what allows a pixel to display any color. Apple suggests that some of these subpixels could be removed to allow infrared light to pass through the gaps.
The idea is that the missing subpixels wouldn’t be noticeable to the eye because Apple would only eliminate a subpixel when it was right next to the same-color emitter of a neighboring pixel. The subpixel of the adjacent pixel could effectively be borrowed to create the same color mix.
A subset of all display subpixels in the pixel removal region may be removed by iteratively eliminating the nearest neighboring subpixels of the same color.
The effectiveness of this approach would be boosted by removing some of the wiring too. Each subpixel has its own power and control lines, and if you eliminate the subpixel then you can also eliminate the associated wiring, enlarging the clear area available for IR transmission.
At least some horizontal and vertical control lines in the plurality of non-pixel regions are rerouted to provide continuous open areas that reduce the amount of difiraction for light traveling through the display to the sensor.
Apple also suggests that parts of the touch-sensitive mesh could be removed in the same areas to further remove barriers to infrared transmission. Given that these would be subpixel-sized holes, they would not affect touch accuracy.
Will this finally happen in the iPhone 17?
It’s been variously predicted that embedded Face ID would be implemented in the iPhone 15, and again in the iPhone 16 – neither of which came to pass, of course. It’s no surprise that some are making the same prediction for the iPhone 17.
I noted last month that there might be a couple of reasons for optimism here.
First, there have been multiple reports that at least one of this year’s models will have a smaller display cutout. Jeff Pu suggested that the iPhone 17 Pro Max would have a “much narrowed Dynamic Island.” Embedding Face ID beneath the display would be the most obvious way to achieve this.
Second, there’s the iPhone 17 Air. Apple’s goal here is the sleekest possible design, and reducing the Dynamic Island to a camera punch-hole would be entirely consistent with this goal.
At the time, the iPhone 17 Air was reputedly going to be the most expensive model in the line-up, which would lend weight to it being first in line for some new tech. Since then, however, there has been back-pedaling on that pricing idea, so for now we’re back to expecting it at some point, but with no way to tell when.
Render: Michael Bower/9to5Mac
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
