Last week, Apple released HomePod (Apple’s upcoming smart speaker) firmware which wasn’t supposed to come out until December. It caught developers attention and out of curiosity, they started digging the code and found out about the biggest release of this year- Apple iPhone 8.
It’s not a rumor, it’s a leak that came straight from Apple. According to Steve Troughton-Smith (developer) and some other developers, multiple lines of code mention BKFaceDetect- which clearly indicates that the upcoming biggest release will feature face recognition technology that will include a BK- Biometric Kit.
I can confirm reports that HomePod’s firmware reveals the existence of upcoming iPhone’s infra-red face unlock in BiometricKit and elsewhere pic.twitter.com/yLsgCx7OTZ
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) July 31, 2017
iPhone 8 will feature an infrared camera to let users unlock the device even in low-light conditions or at night. Steve found references to infra-red face unlock in BiometricKit. Whether the face recognition technology would replace Fingerprint sensor on the iPhone 8 or placed alongside it is not confirmed.
Guilherme Rambo (iOS developer) also confirmed that the iPhone 8 will sport bezel-less display by extracting an image of iPhone from “Payment_glyph_phone-D22.,” where Apple stores its Vector Graphics for animated UI elements.
The bezel-less iPhone image can be extracted from Payment_glyph_phone-D22.caar in PassKitUIFoundation.framework with the code pictured pic.twitter.com/HAyDO0E931
— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith) July 31, 2017
Some rumors said that Apple’s next iPhone will feature Touch ID sensor embedded in the display, looks like it is not going to happen.
According to the developers, the new iPhone is codenamed as D22 while the facial recognition feature is codenamed as Pearl ID. The leaked image also revealed that Apple will ditch the traditional home button as the display will completely fill the front side of the iPhone except for the speaker, sensors, and camera that sits at the top.
As we mentioned earlier, these leaks came directly from Apple’s servers, however, the device is not official yet and unfortunately, we have to wait for that. Apple may unveil the new iPhone, expected to be named as iPhone 8, models in September.