Galaxy S10 To Ditch Iris Scanner For Ultrasonic Fingerprint Sensor
Samsung's next non-foldable flagship smartphone is a bit of an interesting puzzle. On the one hand, we seem to have almost heard everything that can be heard about the Galaxy S10. Yet on the other hand, none of them seems to have stuck around long enough. So here's another one because why not. It seems that after years of trying to develop and improve its iris scanning technology to become more accurate and more secure, Samsung will be dropping it next year in favor of a not so new but also untested ultrasonic fingerprint on display sensor.
Of course, there have already been rumors about Samsung finally using a fingerprint on display or FoD on at least one if not two of the Galaxy S10 models coming early next year. It was, perhaps, merely presumed that Samsung would be making use of the already available optical fingerprint sensor. After all, that was what it was reportedly working on for the past year or so and it has more or less been tested in the market already.
Not so, according to @Ice universe. Samsung will instead use an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor. It's unknown whether Samsung has developed one on its own but, so far, Qualcomm is the only major manufacturer that has tried to market the technology. Considering that would force Samsung to use Qualcomm's mobile platform on all its devices instead of splitting it with its own Exynos chips, that sounds unlikely.
Yes, the S10 cancels the iris sensor and the ultrasonic fingerprint is enough to replace it.
— ICE UNIVERSE (@UniverseIce) November 2, 2018
The ultrasonic FoD won't be an "extra" feature, however. It will replace the iris scanner, which, admittedly, has become less relevant in an age of face recognition. But not all of the latter are deemed to be as accurate and secure as Apple's Face ID. So Samsung either falls back to iris scanning or uses it together with its own face recognition.
By dropping iris scanning and possibly the rear fingerprint scanner as well, Samsung will be forced to rely on that ultrasonic FoD, which is claimed to actually be more accurate and more reliable than the optical FoDs that are already in the market. That said, those claims have yet to be substantiated because, to date, there has been no phone with that feature yet.