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vivo smartphone with in-screen fingerprint sensor coming to CES 2018
- At CES 2018, Chinese company vivo will showcase a smartphone with an in-screen fingerprint scanner.
- With the fingerprint scanner a part of the screen itself, there would be no need to have a scanner on the back.
- If it’s announced at CES, the smartphone could go to market in the next months.
There are two factions of smartphone users nowadays: those who want as much screen space as possible and those who want a fingerprint sensor on the front of the device. Currently, the only way to have both a bezel-less display and a fingerprint scanner is to move it to the back of the device — a design adopted by the Google Pixel 2, Samsung Galaxy S8, and OnePlus 5T.
There may not be a need to compromise anymore, as vivo will unveil the first smartphone with an in-screen fingerprint reader this Wednesday at CES 2018. The promotional image sent out to press today includes a slate device with a fingerprint image appearing in the middle of the screen, and the slogan “Unlock the Future” underneath.
In June of last year, Qualcomm announced the development of in-screen fingerprint scanning technology. Almost instantly, Chinese company vivo announced it would be using the tech to build a prototype, which it showed off only a few days later. Setting up your fingerprint on the prototype took a long time, and your fingers needed to be in fairly specific placement to get the scan to register, but it showed real promise.
Industry analyst Patrick Moorhead recently revealed that vivo was also working with Synaptics to add a fingerprint sensor to their panels and said vivo would be the first to market with this technology. It looks like they have now perfected the system, at least well enough to put it into a smartphone presumably going to market sometime this year.
There are also rumors that the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 9 will have in-screen fingerprint tech, but as of today those rumors are just that.
What do you think? Are you clamoring for a device with an in-screen fingerprint reader? Let us know in the comments!