OK, smartphone designer: We want a fingerprint reader on this new phone. We don’t want it in a button on the front or a pad on the back. We want something different.
How about… under the screen?
This week LG Innotek unveiled a fingerprint reader that occupies a 0.03mm crevice cut into the bottom of the glass of a smartphone screen, freeing smartphone makers from choosing only between a button on the front or a pad on the back.
A buttonless reader has several advantages too, not least of which is a far simpler external design. That in turn makes waterproofing easier, and removes a moving part which could otherwise fail (see: the home buttons of all iPhones ever). It also could just look pretty cool, a benefit which can’t be understated.
The new type of sensor doesn’t suffer for accuracy either; LG say that recognition rates of sub-glass fingerprint readers should be just as good as with button-type sensors.
A LG spokesperson told the Korea Times that the company is already in talks with multiple smartphone makers to commercialise the sensors before the end of the year; Huawei, Google and Apple are obvious potential recipients here. We could also see the tech included in a late-year phone from LG themselves; potentially a successor to the LG V10? We’ll have to see.
What do you think of the new tech? Do sub-screen fingerprint readers make sense, or are buttons and pads the way to go? Let us know in the comments below.