The flood illuminator will only operate after unlock if attention aware features are turned on. At least that's what it has consistently done in my testing.
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Other FaceID analysis
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The flood illuminator will only operate after unlock if attention aware features are turned on. At least that's what it has consistently done in my testing.
I was worried about this too but I find it works at a surprising distance from my face.
I too find that it works at a surprising distance. Sometimes I tap the display to see if I have any notifications with the phone on a low table and I'm not even directly above it, and a lot of times it will unlock. Face ID is a lot more convenient than I expected it to be. I don't miss fingerprint at all
No dots. The Flood Illuminator will trigger sometimes when you unlock the phone, but not every time.
Again, do you have symptoms? If not, don't worry about it, use it and be happy.
OP here. It's been quite a while, so I hope it's OK to resurrect this thread. Some more data follows.
I've identified three distinct modes of operation, while the phone is in normal operation mode (faceID, aware feature ON).
1. Unlock sequence. As soon as the phone wakes up, illuminator fires and stays on. When camera detects attention, dot projector fires for a brief moment to identify the face. After that the projector shuts down. Most probably it uses a lot of energy compared to illuminator.
2. Normal operation. Flood iluminator fires from time to time to check for attention. No dot projector.
3. Emoji. Flood illuminator is ON and dot projector is ON at all times. Actually looks kinda blindingly scary in IR.
Some additional videos below.
This is the unlock sequence slowed down by a factor of 3. As I turn on the phone, the flood illuminator flashes on my face. You can see me looking away, then down at the phone and dot projector fires almost instantly. Honestly the tech behind faceID is just incredible. The rest of the herd are just crawling behind here.
This is "emoji-mode" projected on the wall. You can clearly see the central flood iluminator, 1st order dot matrix and 2nd order dot matrix. Coverage and homogenity of light is, again, crazy for a consumer device, let alone a feature, which is primarily used for - emoji. I died a little inside when I saw this video.
Front view in "emoji-mode". Left is the illuminator, right is the dot projector. Keep in mind that this is recorded in darkness and with an IR camera. In reality the power is quite low, as was discussed in the initial posting.
Finally, so there is no debate about wavelengths anymore, I reserved some time on the spectrometer. There are two distinct wavelengths used here, most probably for the camera to more easily differentiate between the two. IR illuminator flashes at 932nm, while the dot projector uses 940nm.
I've identified three distinct modes of operation, while the phone is in normal operation mode (faceID, aware feature ON).
1. Unlock sequence. As soon as the phone wakes up, illuminator fires and stays on. When camera detects attention, dot projector fires for a brief moment to identify the face. After that the projector shuts down. Most probably it uses a lot of energy compared to illuminator.
2. Normal operation. Flood iluminator fires from time to time to check for attention. No dot projector.
3. Emoji. Flood illuminator is ON and dot projector is ON at all times. Actually looks kinda blindingly scary in IR.
Some additional videos below.
This is the unlock sequence slowed down by a factor of 3. As I turn on the phone, the flood illuminator flashes on my face. You can see me looking away, then down at the phone and dot projector fires almost instantly. Honestly the tech behind faceID is just incredible. The rest of the herd are just crawling behind here.
This is "emoji-mode" projected on the wall. You can clearly see the central flood iluminator, 1st order dot matrix and 2nd order dot matrix. Coverage and homogenity of light is, again, crazy for a consumer device, let alone a feature, which is primarily used for - emoji. I died a little inside when I saw this video.
Front view in "emoji-mode". Left is the illuminator, right is the dot projector. Keep in mind that this is recorded in darkness and with an IR camera. In reality the power is quite low, as was discussed in the initial posting.
Finally, so there is no debate about wavelengths anymore, I reserved some time on the spectrometer. There are two distinct wavelengths used here, most probably for the camera to more easily differentiate between the two. IR illuminator flashes at 932nm, while the dot projector uses 940nm.
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Awesome post! Amazing the technology not only in the TrueDepthCameraSystem, but just our iPhones and iPads, period!
I would love to see the iPad Pro with FaceID to see if there are any changes to the IR Illuminator, and DOT Projector.
Keep us updated. Thank you!
This happens even on iPhones that doesn’t have FaceID... My thoughts are that the IR proximity sensor flashes do detect if the ambient light sensor is covered. Test by yourselves... if you try to simulate a dark environment by putting your thumb on the light sensor the screen brightness doesn’t gets low... because the system knows that is just your hand on front of it.
I'm fairly confident that it's worse for your eyes to be looking at a screen all day in an office than it is using FaceID to unlock your phone.
I'm not worried.
I'm not worried.
Interesting how not a single dot is entering the dialated portion of the pupil, as someone previously mentioned. Guess in this instance no effect on retina of eye is even possible.
Of further note, is that actual area covered by laser dot light is about 5% of overall area, in my estimation. As such the chance that even one laser dot impacts the retina through the pupil opening is rather remote 95% of time.
It would be interesting to measure the intensity of a single dot. I doubt the measuring device being used is sensitive enough to register a single dot intensity. If the measurement was taken at close enough range to emitter that all 30,000 dots contributed to the intensity reading, which seems to have been stated, then in that case 1/30,000 x 1.5 mW = 0.00005 mW as calculated intensity of a single dot.
This doesn’t even take into account, that infrared light photons carry exceedingly low energy. They won’t even knock an electron out of a charged foil leaf.
All the evidence presented should put an end to any further talk of physically harmful effects by Face ID from any reasonable person. Of course this discounts any comments from proponents of flat earth, or fake moon landings.
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Of further note, is that actual area covered by laser dot light is about 5% of overall area, in my estimation. As such the chance that even one laser dot impacts the retina through the pupil opening is rather remote 95% of time.
It would be interesting to measure the intensity of a single dot. I doubt the measuring device being used is sensitive enough to register a single dot intensity. If the measurement was taken at close enough range to emitter that all 30,000 dots contributed to the intensity reading, which seems to have been stated, then in that case 1/30,000 x 1.5 mW = 0.00005 mW as calculated intensity of a single dot.
This doesn’t even take into account, that infrared light photons carry exceedingly low energy. They won’t even knock an electron out of a charged foil leaf.
All the evidence presented should put an end to any further talk of physically harmful effects by Face ID from any reasonable person. Of course this discounts any comments from proponents of flat earth, or fake moon landings.
[automerge]1578939645[/automerge]
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There's three emitters actually. Theres a ToF-based proximity sensor (top left) that's regularly active, even when the screen is off. That's present in all iPhones. That's what you're noticing.
The flood illuminator is on Face ID only models, that goes active because Face ID models have attention aware features, like not dimming the screen when it sees you looking at the phone.
All In all what was the conclusion there is a vid posted that says if attention awareness is off while normal usage does not blink at all