Surprising news
Synaptic’s announcement of the world’s first in-screen fingerprint sensor came with an announcement of sorts at the end, with the promise that at least one of the world’s top vendors would be integrating the tech into their phones come early 2018. Obviously we all assumed it to be market leader Samsung, who is on track to announce its Galaxy S9 in a few months, but according to Forbes, the company that’ll first have the tech would be Vivo.
Patrick Moorhead, contributor for Forbes got to see a pre-production unit of the device, and came away impressed. Synaptic’s Clear ID FS9500 was able to read his fingerprint through the OLED display of the demo phone, though it took a little longer than usual: 0.7 seconds versus the 0.2 seconds that’s usually the case for fingerprint sensors.
As for the tech powering the sensor? Well, it’s CMOS technology, and the long and short of it is that the sensor captures the reflection that the screen produces on your fingerprint between the AMOLED pixel. The sensor will need to be embedded by the screen manufacturer at the start though, and Synaptics says it’s already working hard to secure those partnerships. Integration of the fingerprint scanner does not add much to the cost of the device, according to the company.