Apple is spending millions to add barcodes to iPhone displays to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from manufacturers who claim the screens are defective. Chinese display companies Lens Technology and Byrne Optical have been in the spotlight before for alleged forced labor, and Apple has been accused of letting such accusations go unchecked, but Apple has not shied away from monitoring the two companies and their alleged yield issues.
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A new report from The Information does not accuse the two display companies of falsifying reports to Apple. However, the report does state that 30% of iPhone screens have been scrapped due to problems in the past, which is said to have caused Apple hundreds of millions of dollars in losses (you can imagine where these so-called scrapped screens go). After Apple created a new barcode system etched into the glass, the defect rate is now down to 10 percent.
There are actually two QR codes on every iPhone screen, and they are added in different locations and at different stages of manufacturing. The Information was inconsistent about the size of the QR codes, saying one was only the size of a grain of sand, but later said it was 0.2 millimeters square, describing it as the size of a crayon tip.
But it was because of the defective panel that the smaller code appeared. Apple reportedly spent millions of dollars in 2020 to add this code during the production process, with finished displays scanned and inspected at the end of production.
It was also reported that Lens Technology and Bourne Optics had previously blocked Apple's efforts to determine the true rate of screen defects, but did not explain how it was done. Any large number of defects would increase overall production costs.
Two sources told TheInformation that the smaller barcode is a matrix of 625 dots with embedded lasers. It's also not in the same location on every iPhone.
However, it's somewhere on every iPhone's display, which is said to cause some difficulties. Embedding a barcode initially weakens the screen, so much so that drop tests often show cracks in the glass starting at the location of the barcode. By creating new scanning technology, using a special microscope paired with a ring light, Apple was able to avoid etching codes too deeply into the glass.
Apple continues to use glass raw materials from Corning, a company in which Apple frequently invests. But these raw materials will be transported to the two factories mentioned above for shaping.
If a smaller code tracks the allegedly problematic displays, a second code tracks the actual displays in question, while the larger code lets Apple know which of the two companies provided the display in question.
It's possible that Apple logs more information than just the manufacturer's. More likely, the second code contains enough detail to narrow the issue down to a specific batch of display production.