Everything turned out to be much more difficult. Photo: Engadget
What was discussed
Twitter account @lipilipsi appeared video. On it, the enthusiast soldered the A12 chip from iPhone XS microchip. From this microcircuit there was a wire to the Touch ID sensor. The network writes that it borrowed it from the new iPad Air.
According to the author of the video, the iPhone easily recognized the foreign sensor and offered to register a finger. For greater reliability, the media wrote that Touch ID support on smartphones with Face ID is due to the presence in the model range iPhone SE, which has a Touch ID button. Presumably, fingerprint support migrated to everything Apple smartphones.
The video itself:
The information was quickly picked up by Chinese and American media. Several colleagues from Russian techno publishers also wrote about the fake video. Here are the arguments that debunk @lipilipsi.
Topic 1
Apple take user safety seriously. Therefore, the company does not allow changing the Touch ID and Face ID sensors on smartphones. Each sensor is tied to a native processor in hardware and software.
Even if you want to replace a broken Touch ID with a similar one, you won’t succeed. An authorized service center will refuse to fix you, let alone replace Touch ID with Face ID and vice versa. You can only replace the button itself, but there will be no sensor in it.
Topic 2
It looks like a sensor and a chip with an additional chip. Photo: lilipipsi
The author shows that he managed to bypass the system and associate the sensor with the processor. The video shows how he soldered strange wires directly to the processor. This is also a lie.
Looks like @lipilipsi just glued a small chip to the body of the chip. This makes no sense, since the processor case is a protective barrier that does not allow the contents to penetrate and be damaged. If the enthusiast broke the case and soldered the chip directly, he too would fail. The processor elements are so small that it would not be able to connect the necessary ones. Also, the author was unlikely to be able to hack the iPhone to create software support for Touch ID on the iPhone XS.
Topic 3
Frames from the video. You can see how the system text disappears from the screen. Photo: lilipipsi
The video shows how the iPhone successfully registers a new fingerprint. This is a lie. You can see how Chinese signature fonts go beyond the smartphone itself. Obviously Photoshop. As expected, these inscriptions suggest how to set up the unlock correctly.
Translated from Chinese, it says “Put your finger. Press the button, then release and repeat the action. Most likely, @lipilipsi recorded the screen from the iPhone with the button and then mirrored it to the iPhone with the notch.
What the experts say
Hi-Tech Editorial Mail.ru asked Sergey Romantsev, the author of the TikTok channel romancev768 (4.3 million subscribers) and the Telegram channel of the same name, with a question. Here’s how the blogger commented on the video:
“This is clearly false. There are many questions in the video: starting with the platform for the buttonhole and the shape of the buttonhole itself, ending with where the “craftsman” attached the button. He wouldn’t have laid this wire there, and given the microcircuits he removed, nothing would have happened.
Also, the animations are not original, there are no such animations in the iPhone, and the “craftsman” claims that they are sewn into iOS. This is not true. This is an ad video and will make millions on TikTok.”
Formerly Hi-Tech Mail.ru wrote about @lipilipsi. Then the author declaredwho is a former Apple employee and Huawei. He also introduced the world’s first iPhone with a waterfall screen. Now the veracity of this enthusiast’s developments remains in deep doubt.
Another wonderful engineering video:
The developer has many videos similar to today. On one of them, he embedded Touch ID directly into the logo on the back of the iPhone 12. Of course, that’s also a fake.