iPhone X's Face ID has a bug, Apple's internal document reveals the truth

Face ID is one of the biggest highlights of iPhone X. However, since the release of iPhone X, some users have reported that Face ID makes the rear camera of iPhone X unusable.

Previously, some users reported on Reddit that the iPhone X's Face ID and rear camera often malfunctioned together. One user pointed out that the rear camera's functions except panorama, slow motion and time-lapse photography were unavailable, and Face ID would pop up a prompt saying "Face ID number not available."

Recently, Apple provided repair suggestions for this problem in an internal document provided to Apple Stores and authorized service providers, and indirectly revealed the cause of the Face ID bug.

According to the internal document, when encountering a malfunction caused by Face ID, service personnel at Apple retail stores and authorized service providers should first test the iPhone X's rear camera and repair the system if necessary. If this still does not solve the problem, the customer should be replaced with a new phone instead of repairing the display.

Let's take a look at what the original document says:

In order to provide the best customer experience, if a customer reports that they have an issue with Face ID on their iPhone X, you can resolve the issue with a rear camera repair.

Run AST 2 on the customer's device to check the camera. If the diagnostics find an issue with the camera, perform a repair to see if the issue is resolved. If the issue is not resolved, perform a full device replacement instead of a monitor repair on the same device.

In fact, last year's iOS 11.2 update also caused Face ID failures on some iPhone Xs, but the problem this time may be different.

According to inquiries from some users to Genius Bar staff, the TrueDepth camera used by Face ID and the rear telephoto camera are connected to each other, so the Face ID bug and the rear camera failure seem to be related in some way, but the specific cause is not clear at present.

In addition to this leaked document, Apple has not yet made a public response to the matter or publicly released any related repair plans.

Some issues with Face ID have previously caused users to worry, but they mainly focused on security and privacy. In November last year, a Vietnamese security company Bkav claimed that it had successfully cracked the Face ID of the iPhone X using a homemade 3D mask. Several media outlets have also tested whether Face ID can recognize twins, and the conclusions they reached are different.

In order to dispel users' doubts, Apple also released a "white paper" to explain the technical security issues of facial recognition. The document pointed out that "the probability of a random person in the crowd looking at your iPhone X and being able to use Face ID to unlock it is one in a million (the probability of Touch ID is one in fifty thousand)."

However, compared to the extremely low probability of Face ID being cracked, the unusable Face ID and rear camera will cause greater trouble to users. I wonder if Apple will also release a relevant technical report to explain this failure.