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"Until now, under-display fingerprint scanners required OLED displays to emit light and capture fingerprints"
If you haven't been living under a rock in the last few months, you would know that under-display fingerprint scanners on smartphones are becoming quite popular. However, this tech hasn't trickled down to the budget segment yet as under-display fingerprint scanners only work with OLED screens, which are expensive. But that's about to change now as the world's first under-display scanner has been developed for LCD panels.
In what's being touted to be a breakthrough technology, Fortsense has developed a fingerprint reader that can work through the LCD display. According to the research and development team of R&S, they managed to achieve the feat by revising and improving the fingerprint optical path scheme. For this, the company continuously modified and improved the LCD backlight panel to rectify the display effect, fingerprint imaging effect and other such related issues. Fortsense claims that the new fingerprint scanner's recognition rate is at par with the traditional units. This has been achieved by making use of an algorithm-based approach, which utilises a neural network algorithm to optimise recognition of digits quickly on the LCD panel.
For the uninitiated, the current generation of in-display fingerprint scanners uses either light or sound waves to register and recognise fingerprints. The commonly-used optical fingerprint scanner captures a 2D picture of the fingerprint using light and then detects unique patterns on the surface like ridges through algorithms. The more recent ultrasonic fingerprint scanners used on Samsung flagships work on the same principle but use sound waves, which are said to be more secure. However, both technologies need OLED panels to work optimally.
The new in-display fingerprint scanning tech for LCD panels can be expected to pave the way for brands to offer the feature on more affordable smartphones. However, as of now, there's no word as to when this technology will be rolled out commercially.