It looks like the Samsung Galaxy S9 may not be the first phone to feature an in-display fingerprint scanner after all. A recent report suggested that a top-five smartphone manufacturer is already testing the sensor, and we hoped it would be Samsung, but it isn’t.
According to Forbes analyst Patrick Moorhead, the prototype smartphone that features the first in-display fingerprint scanner from Synaptics, is made by Vivo. And if the phone goes into production, it is very likely that people in the US may not be able to buy it.
Vivo doesn’t usually sell its phones outside China or India, so you’d have to import one to try out the in-display sensor. This isn’t the first time Vivo is trying out this kind of technology. Previously, the company showcased a similar fingerprint technology by Qualcomm on one of their phones. Seems they like the one by Synaptics better.
Here are some pics @anshelsag and I took of the Vivo smartphone with the Synaptics in-display fingerprint reader. The CMOS image sensor is .7mm thick and reads the fingerprint right through the OLED display. The experience was faster than I expected. pic.twitter.com/u1NFpXtFQM
— Patrick Moorhead (@PatrickMoorhead) December 14, 2017
The new sensor from Synaptics is only 0.7mm thick and can recognize fingerprints from underneath an OLED display. It’s also very fast, especially when compared to the FaceID system on the iPhone X. This new sensor will do wonders for phones with bezel-less displays, who had to move their fingerprint reader to the back of the device.
Samsung could also use this tech in the new Galaxy S9, or the Galaxy Note 9. We will have to wait to find out how the tech does in the real world. Hopefully, Vivo releases a prototype at MWC next year.