A Hidden Bar Code in iPhone Screens Saved Apple Hundreds of Millions of Dollars 47
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.
"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.
Apple is ableist (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Do we really need X”? is the new No True Scotsman”.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, I had forgotten Slashdot's lack of ASCII support. My lower start quotation marks have been eaten.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Apple is ableist (Score:2)
Right next to the tracking barcode is the FCC ID, CE label, and other required labelling for products. (All written in size 0.0000001 font.)
These units of measurement are a lousy fit (Score:4, Funny)
> 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.
Re:These units of measurement are a lousy fit (Score:4, Funny)
Allow me to translate into units that you, as a Slashdot reader, are more familiar with. One is a yocto-Rhode Island. The other is three nano-pools (Olympic size).
Re: These units of measurement are a lousy fit (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How Euro-centric. Use Wembley Stadiums and areas the size of Wales like the civilised nations of Britain.
Re: These units of measurement are a lousy fit (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Allow me to translate into units that you, as a Slashdot reader, are more familiar with. One is a yocto-Rhode Island. The other is three nano-pools (Olympic size).
Yes, but how many Wales, Libraries of Congress or London Buses end to end are they.
How big is a grain of sand? How long is a string? (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Better or worse than "the width of a human hair" ... or "libraries of congress"?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit. Nobody is calling something 5mm "sand" they're going to call it a pebble.
Re: (Score:1)
Clearly they've never encountered grit.
Blurring the lines of a supplier? (Score:2)
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)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: Blurring the lines of a supplier? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Ahem...
"Trust... but verify".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: Blurring the lines of a supplier? (Score:2)
But rest assured (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Yawn... (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Yawn... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The amazingness is that Apple would *need* to do QA. Aren't all its phones perfectly manufactured every time???
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
If Google did this, there would instantly be a news story about the new privacy-destroying tracking method.
Re: Yawn... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
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.
QC? Maybe (Score:2)
Or maybe just another underhanded trick to prevent repair
Um... it saved them hundreds of millions right? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
How does that work? Apple have some software in their suppliers' pipeline wh
Re: (Score:2)
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!
Re: \o/ (Score:1)
Yep - I try to avoid reading the fine summary. Thanks for taking one for the team.
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost like if you read the story, you'll understand it what it's about.
Re: (Score:2)
It's almost like if you read the story, you'll understand it what it's about.
Truly LOL!