Finisar, Apple’s second largest supplier of vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays, has announced the acquisition of a 700,000-square foot . As noted by AppleInsider, this suggests TrueDepth and FaceID are coming to all iPhones in 2018.
The TrueDepth camera for the iPhone X works by using a projector to cast 30,000 dots on your face, which it then reads with an infrared camera. Apple already demonstrated applications of the system, FaceID and Animojis, both of which promise implications of their own when the TrueDepth SDK (software developer kit) is available for developers.
By the way, a VCSEL is a semiconductor-based laser diode that emits a highly efficient optical beam vertically from its top surface.
