Apple Just Leaked a Key iPhone 8 Feature by Accident

How a developer stumbled randomly over the new iPhone

A month before the official keynote of Apple, a developer stumbled over official details of the coming iPhone. The embarrassing thing: The Leak came this time from Apple itself.

When Guilherme Rambo saw the firmware of HomePod released by Apple, he initially thought of a mistake. The smart loudspeaker assistant finally comes to the market in December. Rambo's curiosity was aroused and he began to look at the code more closely. What he found, he probably expected at least: Apple's next iPhone.

While some details on Apple's high-end smartphone were already leaked, Rambo found more in the HomePod than rumors, he found Apple's own records of the greatest release in years. The code confirmed that the iPhone 8 or iPhone Pro - so exactly knows the name outside of Cupertino no one - would have a new design, a narrower frame, no home button, and a powerful facial recognition. The biggest Apple Leak comes for years - from Apple itself.

The firmware of the HomePod appeared a few days ago as an official Apple update. Rambo had just downloaded the code in the hope of finding interesting information about the Siri speaker when Apple noticed the error and took the code from the page. Like the iPhone, the HomePod runs on iOS. In itself is not noticeable, developers have access to the beta version of iOS 11 months ago. But Rambo, a Brazilian developer of an ecommerce company, made the decisive discovery: The released firmware was for iOS 11.0.2, two Update levels beyond the current state.

The code included some performance enhancements. Much more interesting, however, was that the update was not intended for the public. So Apple had not yet removed the mentions for unpublished devices - as well as the next iPhone, which will be released in September. It is a process that Apple goes through every year to ensure that developers can access iOS without experiencing anything about the new iPhone.

When he recognized the potential of his discovery, Rambo went to work. "I searched for lines in the firmware that confirm the alleged 'Face ID' feature," says Rambo. "I've searched for the word 'face' and noticed that it matches several icons in the BiometricKit, the Framework for Touch ID." These references do not actually exist in the iOS 11 beta.

Rambo was a bit big, he was safe, so he continued to search. As he walked through BiometricKit, he noticed that the terminology for adding a fingerprint ("EnrollTouchID") also had a counterpart for face recognition: EnrollPearlID. "Pearl ID" always appeared again, each time in connection with the topic of face recognition. Apple may like the face recognition to be quite different at the end, to call it "PearlID", but is not exactly a disguise tactics: "The code name makes it only easier to find all the appropriate code snippets in the operating system and see what function it has "Says Troughton-Smith. In other words, what Rambo had found was an unpublished, unannounced Apple feature.

Finding out what "Pearl ID" means, led to a much bigger find. "While I was looking for mentions of this 'Pearl ID' thing, I found a reference to Pearl-D22," says Rambo. "So I searched for D22 and discovered that this is the internal code name for the 'iPhone Pro' or 'iPhone 10'."

Although there are not very many mentions of D22, Apple leaves no doubt what the abbreviation means. How did Rambo get it? He found a file in the PassKit framework used by Wallet, named "Payment_glyph_phone-D22.caar". This is a file format in which Apple stores vector graphics for animated user interface elements. When Rambo read the picture, he saw an iPhone that he had never seen before. For the simple reason, because it does not yet exist.

Another mention of D22 resulted in a video file that was not present in the firmware, but the name "Enrollment_Tutorial_Loop-D22" indicates that it is a guide on how to register its face with Pearl ID. "There are also a few indications that the D22 model uses a new method to charge the battery," says Rambo. IOS 11.0.2 does not give any indication of what changes might be.

The extent of this leech is the biggest of its kind except for the premature debut of the iPhone 4 on Gizmodo. The minimal frame and the lack of the home button mark the biggest design change for years. And the FaceID feature seems to be a major consideration for the later presentation of the iPhone.

"Apple is now in a difficult situation," says Troughton-Smith. "It will surely cheer up many people internally that they themselves are the source of the only concrete leaks on design and functions." Apart from the disgrace, the impact on sales of the new iPhone will probably be rather small. "I believe that the people who hope for a new iPhone because of Leaks already know all the reports," says Jan Dawson, founder of the data analysis company Jackdaw Research. Dawnson notes that the revelation confirms existing rumors, but the real value is how well the new features work. A firmware has somewhere its limits.

Therefore, the biggest realization is that Apple's internal security has failed, as macOS Sierra days before the release already revealed the OLED TouchBar of the MacBook Pro. The current faux pas is even more striking. Apple expects more from the iPhone 8 than from the entire laptop line together. To see the details leak a month before the official revelation may end up causing financial damage. "We are watching an interruption in iPhone purchases, which is attributable to the increasingly frequent and early reports of future iPhones," said CEO Tim Cook in the past earnings call. This time, however, the blame hits nobody other than Apple itself.