I personally can’t wait till iPhone sensors come on a package that can be easily connected to a Pi or a Jetson these will leak into the generic supply chain in 1-2 refreshes.
Hope so but this depends on how patent encumbered they are, right?
Like maybe you can just buy the part off Aliexpress but if no one is willing to put it onto a breakout board, let alone into a product, that's less broadly useful.
Chinese companies don’t care much for patents, you already have things like the HQ Pi camera with a decent Sony sensor simply because those are now more readily available.
I don’t think the module itself is protected by patents that would prevent breakout boards especially from Chinese companies, you can buy replacement parts that Apple claims are counterfeit but in reality they are identical to the originals because they come from the same supplier just not from the same supply chain.
The only question is how easy would it be to connect those sensors and make use of them if a lot of the logic that is required to drive them is buried in the Ax SoC from Apple it would be difficult if they use a rather standard protocol then it would rather simple.
You can buy Apple SoCs in bulk if you know where to look.
Same goes for touchid and faceid sensors you may have issues with the Apple “genuine hardware” checks so some features would not work but most repair shops have the reset toolkit already which somewhat bypasses that.
Patents protect someone from copying your invention, these parts come from the same suppliers but are manufactured during ghost shifts, skimmed from the main shifts or are rejects that failed to meet Apple’s standards but are still mostly functional (it’s also not uncommon to mark functioning parts as rejects to skim off the top).
I don’t think people realize just how fishy the supply chain in China is even for big players.
