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Apple IT Technology

A Hidden Bar Code in iPhone Screens Saved Apple Hundreds of Millions of Dollars 47

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Next time you try to wipe a smudge off your iPhone screen, take a closer look. See if you can spot one of the two tiny QR codes etched into its glass. Chances are you won't be able to find them. Both codes are tiny -- one is the size of a grain of sand and can only be seen with special equipment, while the other, roughly the size of the tip of a crayon, is laser-printed on the reverse side of the glass somewhere along its black border or bezel. The codes are placed on the glass at different stages of manufacturing to help Apple track and reduce defects. They represent the company's obsessive attention to detail in manufacturing devices such as the iPhone, which has helped it squeeze costs in a traditionally low-margin business.

"Apple has been granularly and singularly tracking many components in the iPhone for some time, but expanding that to the glass and doing it with a microscopic bar code is another level of obsessive attention to detail that few companies would do," said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, a popular Apple gadget repair site. "I've never heard of serial numbers on the glass level, but if you're throwing infinite money at improving your manufacturing knowledge, then why not?" Apple added the smaller of the two QR codes -- 0.2 mm in width -- to iPhone screens in 2020 so it can track precisely how many usable cover glass units its two Chinese suppliers, Lens Technology and Biel Crystal, are making and how many defective cover glass units they are throwing away during manufacturing. Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple's efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs. Apple has paid millions of dollars to install laser and scanning equipment at Lens and Biel factories to both add the microscopic QR code and scan the cover glass at the end of the production process.
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A Hidden Bar Code in iPhone Screens Saved Apple Hundreds of Millions of Dollars More

A Hidden Bar Code in iPhone Screens Saved Apple Hundreds of Millions of Dollars

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  • Against people with bad eyesight. And, do we really need 460 ppi phones in our pockets?

  • These units of measurement are a lousy fit (Score:4, Funny)

    by a5y ( 938871 ) on Friday September 29, 2023 @04:58PM (#63887899)

    > Next time you try to wipe a smudge off your iPhone screen, take a closer look. See if you can spot one of the two tiny QR codes etched into its glass. Chances are you won't be able to find them. Both codes are tiny -- one is the size of a grain of sand and can only be seen with special equipment, while the other, roughly the size of the tip of a crayon,

    I can work with inches, I can work with millimetres but what the hell is this babble? Was the first draft in comparison to football fields and Olympic swimming pools before the editor improved it? This reads like they gave coverage of a science story to the horoscope guy.

  • one is the size of a grain of sand

    This is the dumbest unit of measurement I have seen so far today.

    A grain of sand can be from 0.01mm to 5 mm.

  • I know that the lines between purchaser and supplier always had some intertwining, but when the relationship gets to the level of "I'm tracking your process* to assess your process yield" something has broken. Like trust, among other things.

    (*at this level of granularity)

    • It's called "we're paying you billions of dollars and you know if we want we can start doing this ourselves". Apple is one of those companies that can make or break you.

      I remember when Foxconn in the 90's was just another motherboard OEM and now thanks to those fat Apple contracts they are the largest electronics manufacturer on earth.

    • Ahem...
      "Trust... but verify".

    • Apple is a buyer with extreme leverage. Their definition of a vertically-integrated supply chain is treating its vendors like "We're up in your ass all the time to do things our way to reduce our costs, make things easier for us, eliminate knock off parts, and trust but verify."

    • I know that the lines between purchaser and supplier always had some intertwining, but when the relationship gets to the level of "I'm tracking your process* to assess your process yield" something has broken. Like trust, among other things.

      (*at this level of granularity)

      Well, TFA dis say " Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple's efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs. " so trust was already an issue. How the data is used is key - if it identifies issues the can be fixed before you trash a lot of screens, both companies can save money.

    • I wonder if they want to trace how many glass screens end up "damaged" and end up on ali express. Now they can track that.

  • These barcodes will never be abused to track whether you're a dirty, dirty deviant who dares to have your iPhone fixed by shops that didn't receive the blessing of the almighty fruit to mess with your warranty claims.

    • "Sorry, this glass has not been calibrated with your security processor. This phone will self-destruct in 5 seconds unless it is returned to an Apple authorized repair center for Enhanced Device Service, Level 5. That will be $349 plus tax. Would you like to finance that?"

  • Yawn... (Score:5, Funny)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Friday September 29, 2023 @05:11PM (#63887941)
    Corporation puts QR codes on its products for QA. Yawn.

    Oh wait... it's Apple... How amazing, fantastic, innovative, & brave of them! Wow, I must go & get me one of those!!

    Coming soon, hot off the press: Gasp! Apple employees use washrooms!
    • In fairness, I'd be surprised if Samsung and Google also didn't do it. This creates a control to refuse warranty service if the serial on the display doesn't match the as-built or last-serviced recorded part, shutting out third-party parts and third-party repairs from the market.
      • Just goes to show you that they don't give a fuck about US laws. The warranty laws are such that even if you do replace parts, they have to prove that it was your part that affected the failure. If you plug in an normal PCIE card that works on any other board flawlessly and damages motherboard X, your warranty may still be intact

    • The amazingness is that Apple would *need* to do QA. Aren't all its phones perfectly manufactured every time???

      • Oh yes! Because iPhones & iDevices in general have 2 power sources; #1 electricity from the battery & #2 wave energy, absorbed by the iDevice, from the manufacturer's & owners' sense of self-satisfaction & superiority.

    • If Google did this, there would instantly be a news story about the new privacy-destroying tracking method.

    • Hey, don't mock Apple! They invented the USB interface on smartphones!

      • Hey, don't mock Apple! They invented the USB interface on smartphones!

        You jest; but the fact that you can insert a USB-C Connector in either direction, came directly from Apple inventing that concept for the Lightning Connector; which preceded USB-C for at least 2 years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Apparently the journalist doesn't know that other companies have been doing this for a very long time already. I was working with Chinese suppliers a decade ago who where putting hidden QR codes on stuff. Hidden in the sense that the consumer wouldn't see them, but we were told about them so we could report QC issues.

  • Or maybe just another underhanded trick to prevent repair

  • that's not attention to detail, it's just an engineer solving a problem in the supply chain somebody noticed. The whole post reads like an advertisement.

    • that's not attention to detail, it's just an engineer solving a problem in the supply chain somebody noticed. The whole post reads like an advertisement.

      You forget what Tim Cook's job at Apple was before he was CEO.

      There's a reason that Apple has Logistics and Supplier Control that are second-to-none. It's an area of Primary Focus literally from the top-down. . .

  • Silly excuse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by subreality ( 157447 ) on Friday September 29, 2023 @06:19PM (#63888089)

    I doubt "keeping costs down" is the real reason. Cost control is simple: pay $whatever per good screen delivered. Now it's the supplier's job to optimize their process to do so as cheaply as possible.

    More likely they want to track that the "defects" are actually being trashed instead of being sold to third party repair shops.

    • Unless they inventory every single part they'd have a hard time because one factory can always create duplicates so something looks like a known good part that may have been salvaged and used for repairing another. Apple would have to be able to tie and track individual devices to a user to be able to detect that kind of fraud. There are too many ways to cheat this to actually stop repair shops. What it does prevent is manufacturers who claim they had a bad batch that are really going out the back door to t

  • Apple added the smaller of the two QR codes -- 0.2 mm in width -- to iPhone screens in 2020 so it can track precisely how many usable cover glass units its two Chinese suppliers, Lens Technology and Biel Crystal, are making and how many defective cover glass units they are throwing away during manufacturing. Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple's efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs.

    How does that work? Apple have some software in their suppliers' pipeline wh

    • Apple added the smaller of the two QR codes -- 0.2 mm in width -- to iPhone screens in 2020 so it can track precisely how many usable cover glass units its two Chinese suppliers, Lens Technology and Biel Crystal, are making and how many defective cover glass units they are throwing away during manufacturing. Lens and Biel have previously stymied Apple's efforts to learn the true rate of defects, which can raise its production costs.

      How does that work? Apple have some software in their suppliers' pipeline which cranks out QR codes with encrypted serial numbers?

      Apparently, you got tired before you got to the bottom of TFS; which contains the last sentence:

      "Apple has paid millions of dollars to install laser and scanning equipment at Lens and Biel factories to both add the microscopic QR code and scan the cover glass at the end of the production process."

      So, that's how!

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