Daily Archives: September 28, 2021

Face ID on the iPhone 13 stops working if a third-party replaces the phone’s display

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With the addition of features like a 120Hz display on some models, Apple’s iPhone 13 lineup is many ways a step above the phones the company shipped last year. But when it comes to the question of repairability, the story is more complicated. Conducting a teardown of the device, iFixit found it couldn’t get the iPhone 13’s Face ID feature to work if replaced the phone’s display. No matter what workaround it tried, iFixit could not get Face ID to work again. By its estimation, the display on the iPhone 13 lineup is serial-locked to the device. “Right now, if you replace your screen, Apple kills your Face ID, unless they control the repair,” the company warns.

While obviously not a good look for Apple, there may be a simple explanation for what’s happening. iFixit says it spoke to a licensed repair technician who said they were told by Apple support that the issue is a bug the company plans to fix in a future iOS release. We’ve reached out to Apple for more information. If it turns that limitation is not a mistake, it would be a brazen move on Apple’s part given that the FTC, at the behest of President Joe Biden, recently voted unanimously to tackle unlawful repair restrictions.

Source: Face ID on the iPhone 13 stops working if a third-party replaces the phone’s display | Engadget

A Tesla Big Battery Is Getting Sued Over Power Grid Failures In Australia for not providing promised backup

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Tesla’s Big Battery, located in southern Australia, just got hit with a federal lawsuit for failing to provide the crucial grid support it once promised it could.

Built by Tesla in 2017, the 150-megawatt battery supplies 189 megawatt-hours of storage and was designed to support the grid when it becomes overloaded. Now operated by French renewable energy producer Neoen, it supplies storage for the adjacent Hornsdale wind farm, using clean energy to fill gaps that coal power leaves behind. It made waves at the time of its construction for being the largest lithium-ion battery in the world—though it’s now been superseded by another Tesla battery, the 300-megawatt Victorian Big Battery, also in Australia, which caught fire in July.

On Wednesday, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER), the body that oversees the country’s wholesale electricity and gas markets, announced it had filed a federal lawsuit against the Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR)—the energy storage system that owns the Tesla battery—for failing to provide “frequency control ancillary services” numerous times over the course of four months in the summer and fall of 2019. In other words, the battery was supposed to supply grid backup when a primary power source, like a coal plant, fails.

The HPR’s alleged pattern of failures was first brought to light during a disruption to a nearby coal plant in 2019, according to the regulator. When the nearby Queensland’s Kogan Creek power station tripped on October 9, 2019, the HPR was called on to offer grid backup, having made offers to the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to do so.

But the power reserve failed to provide the level of grid support that AEMO expected, and, in fact, was never able to do so in the first place, the lawsuit alleges, despite making money off of offering them. Though HPR did step in eventually, and no outages were recorded, the incident spurred investigation into a number of similar failures over the course of July to November 2019. The reserve’s failure to support the grid in the way it promised created “a risk to power system security and stability,” a press release on the lawsuit says.

“Contingency FCAS providers receive payment from AEMO to be on standby to provide the services they offer,” Clare Savage, chair of AER, said in a press release on the suit. “We expect providers to be in a position, and remain in a position, to respond when called upon by AEMO.”

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Source: A Tesla Big Battery Is Getting Sued Over Power Grid Failures In Australia

Samsung’s has larger, stretchier OLED display that looks a bit like a rubber sheet

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Hot on the heels of LG’s “Real Folding Window” showcase, Samsung is taking its moment to shine with a new stretchable OLED display demo.

At this week’s Global Tech Korea 2021, Samsung presented an impressive 13-inch OLED panel that appears to stretch at varying degrees. The panel displayed a video of lava flowing while different sections rose and fell as if to mimic the flow of the lava and thus adding another level of 3D immersion to the content.

According to Changhee Lee, executive vice president of Samsung Display, the degree at which stretchable displays could be deformed “was about 5% in the past, but now it has improved significantly,” going on to suggest that the company plans to use this technology in future products like rollable smartphones and more (via ETNews).

This isn’t the first time Samsung showcased impressive display technology aimed at future form factors. Earlier this year, the company presented a video showing off display concepts like a slideable smartphone, a display that folds in two parts, and folding tablets. The company has also shown off an earlier concept of its stretchable display technology back in 2017, although the panel was smaller at 9.1-inches.

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Source: Samsung’s larger, stretchier OLED display technology is creepy and cool | Android Central