Apple will use Windows Hello-style facial recognition hardware in iPhone 8, suggests analyst

The iPhone 8 is promising to be something really special. With all the news about its all-glass body, stainless steel frame, lack of physical buttons, a touchscreen that doubles as a fingerprint sensor, wireless charging support and just about everything but the kitchen sink, why would it not?

Adding to all this awesome is news from Ming-Chi Kuo himself, the KGI Securities analyst with an uncanny ability to sniff out all of Apple’s little secrets.

If you’ve been religiously following iPhone rumours like we have been, you’ll be aware that Apple is rumoured to be incorporating facial recognition features into its new iPhone. Kuo believes that Apple will be using a front camera-infrared sensor combo that can actually scan your face in 3D, much like Microsoft does with Windows Hello, reports 9to5Mac.

Better still, as with Kinect, the 3D scanner might be able to scan a 3D environment, and not just your face. Kuo even believes that the feature can be used in future games to literally replace your head with a 3D object.

Augmented Reality selfies are also well within the realms of possibility.

The possibilities are endless of course, but this also means that Apple’s much vaunted portrait mode might actually come to the front camera. As we noted in our Vivo V5 Plus review, bokeh on the front camera actually does wonders for selfies.

Kuo claims that the algorithms for this technology was acquired by Apple when it acquired Israeli firm PrimeSense. He claims that the phone’s sensor will be made by Sony and that the IR receiver will be made by Foxconn, which will be a 1.4MP unit.

He speculates that future iPhones might eliminate the need for a second rear camera for depth-sensing purposes, lending portrait-mode functionality to the less-endowed 4.7-inch iPhone models.