A closer look at the capabilities and risks of iPhone X face mapping
On Friday Apple fans were queuing to get their hands on the newly released iPhone X: The flagship smartphone that Apple deemed a big enough update to skip a numeral. RIP iPhone 9. The shiny new hardware includes a front-facing sensor module housed in the now infamous ‘notch’ which takes an unsightly but necessary bite out of the top of an otherwise (near) edge-to-edge display and thereby enables the smartphone to sense and map depth — including facial features. So the iPhone X knows it’s your face looking at it and can act accordingly, e.g. by displaying the full content of notifications on the lock screen vs just a generic notice if someone else is looking. So hello contextual computing. And also hey there additional barriers to sharing a device. Face ID has already generated a lot of excitement but the switch to a facial biometric does raise privacy concerns — given that the human face is naturally an expression-rich medium which, inevitably, communicates a lot of information