Y Huawei has been using 3D depth sensing for years. It was one of the first major companies to use Altek 3D depth sensing technology (Altek just updated its technology at this year's CES).
Huawei was also using facial recognition technology before Apple and intertwining AI into the mix.
The only difference is that they chose not to bag it up into a full blown 'FaceID' at the same time as Apple. That doesn't mean they weren't already working on their own solution.
You only have to look on these forums to find people claiming that FaceID was two years ahead of the competition. Really? If that were the case, how was Huawei able to not only able to reveal their own solution in November last year but to have an Honor engineer casually demoing it in person to anyone with an interest in learning about it?
How were they able to put together a solution with ten times the resolution of FaceID and improve on it?
The most logical thinking is that, for varying reasons, Apple simply beat them out of the gate and they felt the need to take the wraps off their plans earlier than expected.
The reasons could be cost, hardware and/or software with software being the most probable part.
We already know that the Huawei 3D scanning precision will be sub millimeter, for example, and one particular use of that could be for the creation of very lifelike avatars for gaming etc.
Emojis? We went from emojis to animated Gifs. It doesn't take a genius to foresee that more advanced animated emojis would appear at some point or that the quality of them would also increase when the technical aspects improved (hence tongue recognition in the Huawei solution and something that Apple will almost certainly add at some point). We also know that the Huawei solution will be able to override screen rotation when a user is looking at the screen while laying down, for example.
Just like it didn't take a genius to foresee that Apple would embed a QI reader in the camera app. Something that Huawei did years ago. Should I say Apple copied someone, or is it simply a logical move?
The article clearly states that companies leapfrog each other which is definitely the case nowadays. Yes, call it copying if you really insist but if you do, be aware that it would be applicable to everybody, including Apple.
My take on this is it really boils down to how solutions work. FaceID depends on software and the NPU and so far is working as planned.
There are already cases of the 'one in a million' match cropping up and that's why FaceID cannot be truly evaluated until it's been in use for many, many months but I'm sure that future hardware/software advances will be able to improve on things.
The Huawei solution will bring that hardware improvement along with 3D object modelling etc but the real proof will be in how it works. The software behind the solution and that is to be seen.
So, to sum up. If they really were 'copying' in the sense you suggest, we would never have seen that Honor engineer (from Huawei's sub brand) with a running prototype just weeks after Apple announced the iPhone X, much less with such a powerful feature set and much less, the possibility of it actually appearing on a phone next month!
Let me tell you something about Huawei, They are a Chinese government backed company, they only exist to copy what other companies are already doing. I have known about them since the late 90's when they got into the Networking equipment business and they were targeting copying Cisco equipment. I work with people who consulted with them back in the early 2000's when the Dot Com bust happen, at that time Huawei had engineers working 24/7 and I mean they had engineers/scientist working 3 shifts a day reverse engineering networking and computer equipment made by western companies. I suspect the same thing is happening today, they have more resources to put on problems and the fact they do not need to invent, test and problem solve means they can replicate and copy quickly from those who already did the hard work. I have no doubt they had been working on similar things as Apple since what Apple is doing is not 100% new, but as we know when Apple solves a problem it works well and Huawei was just given the roadmap to what is required to work and they just spent month replicating it. Chinese companies are not coming out with things not has never been seen before. They had not advanced that far into free thinking.
Apple can not complain, if they did you know the Chinese government would kick them out of China.
We may never know the truth but for a company that doesn't invent anything, they sure do invest a pretty sum in R&D, have research centres all over the world and a have a fair few patents. This couldn't possibly be true, right?
What is true is that in the last few years, the engineering count in the cloud computing division alone, went from 2,000 to 16,000.
Samsung, for as much as we might like to deny it, is very similar to Apple and Huawei in many areas. In both the good and the bad.
Fcking Chinese Spy. Case closed. The Chinese doesn't invent anything. All they do is COPY. Stop posting the damn link from a Chinese website. Media is controlled by the government there. They can bullshit anything they want. Ask Amazon how they feel about Alibaba...oh yeah.
That particular story was widely reported at the time and in the 'western' media too.
This is the first time I've actually posted a link to it as I have never seen any official information to back it up. The only reason for posting it was to highlight the irony that the OP was effectively doing something similar.
As I said, we may never know the truth but it's worth taking into account.
I was not doing something similar unlike you who only know what they read on the internet. I worked for companies who were directly affected by Huawei copying. and I know people who was on the inside of Hauwei, grand it for a short time but they saw first hand what they were doing. When Huawei first started to release networking equipment we got our hands on some since we could not understand how they could make it so much cheaper, we found out quickly it was exact copies of some of our equipment and Cisco equipment. How did we know, there were little board layout tricks we did to make thing work better that no one else did and they showed up in Huawei products.
That is why this company exist today, they were charted by the Chinese government to rapidly bring China into the 21st century with telecom equipment. I have worked in high tech a long time and everyone looks at each other products but most US companies will create their own product may barrow a few ideas but they still design and test their own product and this process take time, no one has figure out how to compress time when you doing a new design, Copying is the only way to compress time. This is why it take Apple years to bring out a new product, they are doing all the work from scratch. There are some companies that come up to speed quickly, most time they hire people from other companies with the Knowledge and experience which you may not understand by just looking at something. Huawei never hired these people and I and guaranty you their engineers did not learn what the needed in school.
Do not foul yourself, they are not doing great things and patent counts do not matter if the patent do not have value you can patent most anything in China.
So, to sum up. If they really were 'copying' in the sense you suggest, we would never have seen that Honor engineer (from Huawei's sub brand) with a running prototype just weeks after Apple announced the iPhone X, much less with such a powerful feature set and much less, the possibility of it actually appearing on a phone next month!
All you need to do is to read the damn title of the the link I posted and would know that I didn't suggest "copying":
Oh look, an Android phone maker blatantly copied the iPhone X
I hope you can at least see that one possible interpretation of your opening line is that you are not simply 'suggesting' but outright 'affirming' and using the link to support the affirmation.
You really lack of comprehensive reading. Referencing the claim from an article is not the same as the self "claim".
Looking to keep up with Apple's iPhone X, Samsung is planning to add an animoji-like "3D emoji" feature to the Galaxy S9 premiering later this month, according to a Korean report.
Renders of the S9 and S9+ supplied by Evan Blass.
It's not yet clear what Samsung will actually name the technology, ETNews said this week. The publication did claim that Samsung's software will be "more advanced" than Apple's, though it didn't elaborate on those improvements.
Samsung is preparing to announce the S9 at a Feb. 25 press event. Much is riding on the phone as the company's next flagship.
One of the phone's other new features should be "Intelligent Scan," presumably using the same systems behind 3D emoji to take on Apple's Face ID. Samsung phones have long had facial recognition, but Face ID's reliance on 3D sensing is thought to make it more reliable.
While Samsung is often accused of imitating Apple -- the latter of course once launched multiple lawsuits -- the two companies regularly leapfrog each other in features. Samsung, for example, has had OLED edge-to-edge displays for years, going as far back as 2014's Galaxy Note Edge.
Of course Samsung will, they and Google will add anything Apple do to Android. There's a door at Goole HQ labelled "Apple /Google R&D."
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No true Scotsman
Whew...fallacy deployed, crisis averted. If Samsung were truly copying Apple...
I was not doing something similar unlike you who only know what they read on the internet. I worked for companies who were directly affected by Huawei copying. and I know people who was on the inside of Hauwei, grand it for a short time but they saw first hand what they were doing. When Huawei first started to release networking equipment we got our hands on some since we could not understand how they could make it so much cheaper, we found out quickly it was exact copies of some of our equipment and Cisco equipment. How did we know, there were little board layout tricks we did to make thing work better that no one else did and they showed up in Huawei products.
That is why this company exist today, they were charted by the Chinese government to rapidly bring China into the 21st century with telecom equipment. I have worked in high tech a long time and everyone looks at each other products but most US companies will create their own product may barrow a few ideas but they still design and test their own product and this process take time, no one has figure out how to compress time when you doing a new design, Copying is the only way to compress time. This is why it take Apple years to bring out a new product, they are doing all the work from scratch. There are some companies that come up to speed quickly, most time they hire people from other companies with the Knowledge and experience which you may not understand by just looking at something. Huawei never hired these people and I and guaranty you their engineers did not learn what the needed in school.
Do not foul yourself, they are not doing great things and patent counts do not matter if the patent do not have value you can patent most anything in China.