When Apple introduced the iPhone X in September 2017 as the smartphone industry’s benchmark, one of its main innovations was the disappearance of the on/off button underneath the screen, which had remained virtually unchanged since the original design, and with it the elimination of the Touch ID fingerprint unblocking feature, which was replaced by Face ID facial identification.
To describe the iPhone X as the smartphone benchmark is to state the obvious: after its launch, virtually all its rivals also removed that same front button, replacing it with a notch, thus leaving a screen occupying the entire front surface; with others moving the fingerprint sensor to the rear and others using their own facial recognition systems. A few companies have come up with their own features, such as One Plus’s teardrop or Essential’s notch settings.
However, Apple’s innovations, particularly in regard to Face ID and other security features, were not about looks: sure, there were all kinds of attempts around the world to beat the company’s security measures: aside from the twin test, of concern to a very limited group of people in the world, a Vietnamese company, Bkav, came up with unconvincing proof of a concept to bypass the feature and that involved the creation of an extremely complicated and expensive mask, using a silicone nose and areas around the eyes obtained by two-dimensional infrared images that had to be built separately and in detail: a job that required access to highly precise facial scans and many hours of work by several highly specialized professionals. The company tried to make out its efforts were not beyond the scope of most people, but it was pretty clear: Apple’s security was beyond most people’s scope and the smartphone was considered secure.
The science behind Apple Face ID explains this: the company uses a two-module sensor, one that projects a grid of small infrared points on the owner’s face, and another that reads the resulting pattern and generates a three-dimensional map, which is compared with that previously registered by the user using a secure subsystem. The result is a procedure that almost immediately becomes second nature and that can even take into account variations such as the use of glasses, hats or other facial features that wouldn’t help an imposter.
What happens when this feature is copied by Apple’s rivals? The simple answer is that they haven’t succeeded in copying it. While Apple’s goal has been to create a highly secure and highly usable system, its competitors have only been able to come up with something that looks like Apple’s. An article by Thomas Brewster in Forbes, “We Broke Into A Bunch Of Android Phones With A 3D-Printed Head”, describes how a simple three-dimensional scanning of a person’s face and its subsequent reproduction in a three-dimensional printer allows easy access to LG, Samsung and One Plus, while clearly failing with the iPhone.
Unlike the convoluted steps required to use Bkav’s methods, virtually anyone can take a three-dimensional scan of his or her head in a few minutes — here’s mine, still in need of a little polishing, done with a regular camera — access a 3D printer, and use it to unlock their smartphone. In the Brewster tests, only one other company reached a level of precision similar to that of Apple’s and that systematically rejected three-dimensional printing as an identification attempt: Microsoft’s Windows Hello. As the original article says, the fact that these are two of the world’s highest-valued technology companies in the world is clearly no accident.
The article proves once again the importance of leading innovation and an industry agenda: the original, not the copycat. The issue here isn’t whether Tom Cruise and his pals are going to replicate your face and break into your smartphone: it’s that some companies, in their efforts to follow the leader’s latest new development, can do no more than copy the features, and not the innards.
It all comes down to understanding what a company aspires to, understanding the difference between innovation and imitation, and as customers, how much we value innovation.
