Is the iPhone X’s biggest feature coming to iPad?
Is this the proof we need to get all excited about a big slab of plastic?
One thing that iPad users are very jealous of when considering iPhone X users is the fact that they’ve got that fancy FaceID thing on their phones, but it’s missing from the tablets. Very annoying for them, it is, not having it - don’t bring it up at parties, it has the potential to ruin the whole evening.
The feature enables users to gain access to their phones simply by looking at it - it scans their face and unlocks all the goodies within. However, it’s currently only available on the iPhone X, so any of you lot out there with an iPad will have to open it the old-fashioned way, using your thumb, or a pattern, or - chill out, granddad - a numerical code. Pah!
But hey, it looks like that’s all about to change. A developer called Steve Troughton-Smith tweeted that Apple’s AvatarKit has come to the iPad as a part of a system update, although he mentions that it “still requires a TrueDepth camera to do face tracking”, hinting that only future iPads will support FaceID.
So as it stands, iPads can’t support face tracking as it would require hardware used in the iPhone X TrueDepth camera to actually work. The next model though? It’s probably where it’s all heading. It happened with TouchID, which started on the iPhone, nipped over to the iPad and even ended up on the MacBook Pro, so this is the next step.
In terms of time, according to a Bloomberg, Apple is planning to launch its next tablet “a little more than a year after the last major iPad Pro upgrade,” so we’re talking September this year, basically. Better start putting your face on!
(Image: Getty)
