This phone's in-display fingerprint sensor is a taste of things to come


I just picked up a Vivo phone, laid my thumb on its screen and voila: I unlocked it. That might not sound like much, but titans like Apple and Samsung have reportedly struggled to squeeze fingerprint sensors beneath their own displays. And yet here I am, with a prototype phone from a company most have never heard of, touching a finger to glass and watching a phone come to life.

What's really impressive is how conceptually elegant this setup is. The whole thing is made possible by a Synaptic CMOS sensor -- which is basically just a very tiny camera -- laminated to the back of an OLED panel. (LCDs are a no-go because of their backlights.) The light from the OLED display itself illuminates your fingerprint, which the sensor "sees" and checks against the print stored on the phone. Of course, none of this will matter to the people who actually try it. Aside from the fact that you can't actually see the sensor, it works just like you'd expect it to.

That's not to say it worked all the time, though -- at first the sensor often didn't recognize my finger. This phone definitely isn't ready to go on sale, so it's hard to say if my frequent failed attempts were because of non-final software or a sensor that just didn't work very well. Thankfully, whatever the issue was seemed to resolve itself.

Now, I'm very taken with how clever this approach is, but it also has some potentially fundamental pain points. For one, people screw up their screens all the time. A crack running across the display or a few well-placed scratches could mean what the sensor sees no longer matches up with the stored image of your fingerprint. Then again, it seems likely that you could login another way and re-register your finger to make that stored print the new normal. (A Synaptics rep stopped short of confirming this outright.)

More importantly, the sensor might not recognize your fingerprint if it's distorted -- say, if you're pressing your finger onto the screen harder than you were when you registered it. Needless to say, this is going to take a lot of getting used to -- hopefully, it won't be too long before we get to try a sensor like this in a more polished phone.

Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

via Engadget RSS Feed "http://ift.tt/2mpGn6u"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Evernote cuts staff as user growth stalls

Image
Note-taking app Evernote has fallen on hard times of late, culminating in its latest spate of job cuts impacting 15 percent of its workforce (54 employees). CEO Chris O' Neil -- an ex-Googler who took the reins in 2015 -- announced the firings at an all-hands meeting earlier today, reports TechCrunch . In a message on the Evernote blog , O' Neill admitted he'd set "incredibly aggressive goals" for the company in 2018. He continued: "Going forward, we are streamlining certain functions, like sales, so we can continue to speed up and scale others, like product development and engineering." The layoffs follow an exec exodus just weeks ago and the company's recent brand refresh (complete with a refined logo and wordmark). But critics are more concerned about its product, especially the free tier, which they claim lacks the perks to
Read more

The best air conditioner

Image
By Liam McCabe This post was done in partnership with Wirecutter . When readers choose to buy Wirecutter's independently chosen editorial picks, it may earn affiliate commissions that support its work. Read the full article here . After six summers of researching, testing, and recommending window air conditioners, we've learned that quiet and affordable ACs make most people the happiest—and we think the LG LW8016ER will fit the bill in most rooms. This 8,000 Btu unit cools as efficiently and effectively as any model with an equal Btu rating, and runs at a lower volume and deeper pitch than others at this price. Little extra features like a fresh-air vent, two-axis fan blades, and a removable drain plug help set it apart, too. The LG LW8016ER is a top choice for an office or den, and some people will find it quiet enough for a bedroom, too. If our main pic
Read more

We won't see a 'universal' vape oil cartridge anytime soon

Image
Pre-loaded cartridges of cannabis concentrate are currently among the most popular means of consumption, and for good reason. They're discreet to use and easy to handle, a far cry from the dark days of 2016 when we had to dribble hash oil or load wax into narrow-mouthed vape pens by hand. But, frustratingly, an ever increasing number of oil cartridge manufacturers employ one-off design standards so that their products won't work with those of their competitors, thereby locking customers into proprietary ecosystems. We've already seen this with nicotine vaporizers -- which has a seen a massive rise in "pod systems" in the last few years, each outfitted with a unique canister and battery built to be incompatible with those of their competition. Is it too late for the burgeoning cannabis industry to set a universal standard for their product designs?
Read more