Next revolution in smartphone – Under display fingerprint sensor
2017 has been year of bezel-less smartphones be it galaxy S8/Note8 from Samsung or iPhone X from Apple or an affordable flagship Oneplus 5T, all have shown us beauty with near edge to edge display. Many manufacturer moved their fingerprint sensor to back of the phone for accommodating bezel-less screen. With 10th anniversary special iPhone X, Apple ditched their touch Id in favor of newly launched Face Id which is supposed to be the most secured facial recognition at the moment. Here comes the new technology in picture which can sense the fingerprint even when the finger is placed on the screen of smartphone known as Ultrasonic Fingerprint Sensor.
Ultrasonic Fingerprint Sensor
Sometime back qualcomm announced new ultrasonic fingerprint solution called as Sense ID which can be placed underneath screen. That means no compromise on fingerprint sensor placement at front in favor of bezel-less screen. Placing your registered finger on specified screen portion will simply unlock your phone.
Qualcomm had previous version of this sensor but it was feasible only under metal and glass, this is the first time they succeeded getting it work under the display.
At MWC Shanghai 2017, engadget got to see this tech in action on Vivo’s prototype device.
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| Gif credit – Engadget |
Its noticeable in the gif that qualcomm sense Id is definitely slower compared to existing capacitive fingerprint tech available in market. But not to forget this was just a demo and will be improvised further to make it production ready.
How Qualcomm’s Sense ID works
Qualcomm’s Sense ID uses ultrasonic sound to map out the details of your fingerprint. Sense ID uses a transmitter and a receiver setup to capture the fingerprint details. An ultrasonic pulse is transmitted against the finger placed on the sensor, these pulse reflect back from the pores and ridges on finger. Same is collected by receiver which can detect the mechanical stress at different points on sensor that can be either stored as a fresh fingerprint data or can be compared with existing fingerprint information.
This new ultrasonic technology for recognizing fingerprint is expected to debut in 2018 consumer ready smartphones.
Personally I prefer combination of facial recognition and fingerprint which is like cherry on top of icing as unlocking phone lying on desk would require just a glance from you and taking phone out of pocket will be ready to use even before it reaches in front of your face.
Similar implementation was recently seen on Oneplus 5T but facial recognition was not provided with privilege to approve any kind of payment transactions via. Android Pay or any other banking app due to the fact its not as secured as fingerprint bio-metric solution.
but now Vivo has become the first one to introduce this new invention.
Ya even they were the first to show the prototype at MWC but with Qualcomm’s under display technology. Now, with the production variant smartphone they went with synaptics optical in-display sensor over Qualcomm’s ultrasonic technology. Let’s see smartphone market leaders goes with which technology and when.