Display embedded fingerprint sensor has become arguably the most highly anticipated feature for this year’s flagship smartphones. Apple, Samsung, Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi – all companies are rumored to be working on this thing, and their fans are eagerly waiting to see the magical devices with such sensors. Samsung’s intentions to work on this technology became evident quite early when it had invested in Synaptics, a maker of displays and fingerprint sensors. However, now it seems that things haven’t turned out as they were expected to be, and as a result, Sammy has probably dropped the plans of such a fingerprint sensor – at least for now.
Yes – a company executive recently told Naver that after trying almost every single trick that would help embed the fingerprint sensor in display, Samsung has finally decided to give up on it for now. So a Galaxy Note 8 with fingerprint sensor hidden under the display is very unlikely now.
According to the executive an optical fingerprint sensor is causing 2 major headaches for the company, and as of now company’s engineers haven’t been able to find a proper answer for any of them:
- First problem is that of yield rates. Generating proper yields with a sensor hidden under the display is turning out to be more tricky than expected, which is causing security related issues.
- And the second problem is that the part of display under which this sensor is hidden is appearing much brighter than the rest of display, thus causing a ghosting effect, which certainly does not look cool!
According to The Investor, currently Samsung does not have any proper solution for both these issues. As a result, it has probably decided to hold the plans of optical fingerprint sensor for some more time until it’s perfect. For now the sensor will be a physical one, located on the back. But Samsung, not next to the camera, please!
This news is certainly disappointing for Samsung fans. But don’t lose faith – may be we can see such a sensor in Galaxy S9, which is due for a release next year. But before that it’ll also be interesting to see how other players go about it. Will all of them fail in perfecting their optical fingerprint sensors? Or will some of them surprise everyone by succeeding in this task? It’s certainly gonna be an interesting development to watch.
