Now that everyone is catching on to the edge-to-edge display trend, the new future of smartphones could very well be under-the-display fingerprint scanners. This isn't to say under the glass, rather beneath the thickness of the display.
Accordingly, Vivo has been previewing a new smartphone that boasts such technology, courtesy of an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm. The scanner works through the OLED display up to 1.2mm thick. In addition, the sensor is still capable of reading movement when wet or greasy.
According to Richard Lai, Engadget Chinese's Editor-in-chief and Engadget's Senior Editor, “I found the fingerprint recognition speed to be noticeably slower -- about one second between first touch and entering home screen -- than the near-instantaneous unlock that I'm used to on most recent smartphones.” Here’s Vivo’s under-display fingerprint scanning tech in action. https://t.co/LYaAncqBSu #mwcs17 #vivo #qualcomm #ultrasonic pic.twitter.com/PX0G6xkTi9 — Richard Lai (@richardlai) June 28, 2017
It has been reported that Qualcomm and Synaptics have been attempting to perfect the ultrasonic sensor for a while now, but who will be first to feature the technology on a mass-produced smartphone?
Now take a look at everything we know so far about the much-anticipated iPhone 8.