Many of you may enter here knowing the answer, but I am sure that most do not. And, unlike most Android, iPhone do not use the camera to identify our face and unlock the iPhone, something curious, but what makes it such a safe method.
It is very simple to try. You just have to cover the Front camera of your iPhone And try to unlock it, you will see how by magic it works. Of course, just cover the camera, if you cover all the notch or dynamic island you will discover the trick, and that is where the sensor that collects and confirms our data.
How does the face ID of an iPhone work
The system is quite simple, although Apple tries to explain it to us in a technical way that we may not understand perfectly, however, we will see it, to later comment its real operation:
The technology that makes Face ID possible includes part of the most advanced hardware and software we have created. The Truedepth camera Precision captures facial data through the projection and analysis of thousands of invisible points that create a depth map of the face, from which a infrared image. A part of the neural engine of the A11 chips, A12 Bionic, A12x Bionic, A13 Bionic, A14 Bionic and A15 Bionic, protected in Secure Enclave, transforms the depth map and the infrared image into a mathematical representation and compares it with the corresponding facial data.
As we see, he talks about the Truedepth camera, which, although we do not see it at the notch or dynamic island, and we can see it in the image that we leave here. It would be one Second totally different camerawith “rays” projection that would analyze our face, it would be something like a laser meter, which can know the distance and depth of each part of us to analyze if we really continue to have 3,123 cm nose or if the separation of the eyes is the same, among a thousand other metrics that would make more difficult someone to be like us to have the similar fingerprint. Hence Apple speaks that It is safer than the Touch ID.
If we wear glasses, or mask, the iPhone itself detects it, since the rest of your face still coincide, so, despite being less safe, since we have less confirmations, it continues to unlock it since it would be very complicated that someone was exactly the same as you, except for the glasses or mouth.
In summary, the Face ID does not use the front camera, but an infrared and laser chamber, which is why It also works at nightsince it does not really need to see our face, but to analyze the distances and shapes of it, which does so by measures, not by reasonable resemblance or any other method, and hence a photo does not serve to unlock the face ID, since it will take it as a simple role and you will not be able to deceive it, unless you make a 3D model of that person, there the thing changes.
