The death of the headphone jack outraged many iPhone fans, but the next component heading for Apple’s scrapheap may be less sorely missed.
According to Ming-Chi Kuo, a respected analyst at KGI Securities, the iPhone 8 will drop the home button to make way for a huge zero bezel screen.
But rather than remove the TouchID altogether, an optical fingerprint sensor will be built into a panel beneath the screen to read your print.
The invisible scanner will act as a stepping stone for Apple to ultimately move to a facial recognition security system.
Judging by the bio-recognition patents that Apple has applied for, we believe it is leaning toward facial recognition technology rather than iris recognition. However, we note that the technical challenges of facial recognition include: (1) algorithms; (2) hardware design; and (3) the build-out of a database for verification and authentication, which could be time consuming. As such, before Apple can fully replace the fingerprint system with facial recognition, a combination of the two steps of bio-recognition could be a valid solution for enhancing transactions security.
Kuo previously reported that the 10th anniversary iPhone would also boast a glass body and potentially wireless charging.
Facial recognition software has been touted as the next big step in cybersecurity, but not everyone’s convinced of its merits.
Last year, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that commercial-grade AI could be tricked into giving access to intruders wearing a pair of 18p sunglasses.
That said, the technology is constantly improving, because artificial intelligence learns to better recognise people the more images it sees.