Apple is said to target rear-facing 3D sensor for 2019 iPhone

San Francisco/Tokyo: Apple Inc. is working on a rear-facing 3D sensor system for the iPhone in 2019, another step toward turning the handset into a leading augmented-reality device, according to people familiar with the plan. Apple is evaluating a different technology from the one it currently uses in the TrueDepth sensor system on the front of the iPhone X, the people said. The planned rear-facing sensor would instead use a time-of-flight approach that calculates the time it takes for a laser to bounce off surrounding objects to create a three-dimensional picture of the environment. The iPhone X uses its front-facing 3D sensor for Face ID, a facial-recognition system that replaced the fingerprint sensor used in earlier models to unlock the handset.